


Hagiolatry

by evewithanapple



Category: Stigmata (1999)
Genre: F/M, Religious Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If God can work through me, he can work through anyone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> When I originally signed up for SFBB to rewrite this movie, I had no idea the project would become so long, so involved, or so ultimately rewarding. Completing this work would not have been possible without the help of innumerable people- the SFBB mods and fellow writers, my friends and followers on twitter and tumblr, and everyone who cheered me on during the writing process. Naming everyone would take more time and space than I have here, so I just want to say: thank you so much, to everyone who made this possible.

"Love is choosing, the snake said.  
The kingdom of god is within you  
because you ate it."

\- Margaret Atwood, "Quattrocento"

 

* * *

 

Each morning for ten years, Paul Alameida rose at dawn, as the morning light crept into his cell. The vespers bell was rung not long after, but he never needed an alarm to wake him; he rose with the dawn. This morning, his knees creaked as he rose from the bed and shuffled to the far wall where his crucifix hung. Not his only one, of course; another hung from his neck, and another hung before the altar. But the one hanging in his cell was most precious to him, and the one he said his rosary to before leaving the cell each morning. It was the only one that remained from his time in Rome.

 

He could not have said, precisely, why he treasured it so; he held no love for the Vatican, or fond memories of it, save for the friends he had had there. The papers on his desk were proof enough of that- if Houseman could see them now, he would throw Alameida from his church all over again, and still Alameida did not regret them. But he felt the excommunication each day like a splinter in his soul that throbbed anew whenever he knelt to pray. It whispered in his ear as he slept, as he took confession, as he gave Communion: an insidious voice insisting _you are damned, damned, damned_.

 

(The Devil’s voice.)

 

Now, as he knelt, he shook his hands free from the bell sleeves of his habit. An affectation- his own pride- but he wore it each day, only removing it to bathe or change into a fresh one. It was woven of coarse wool, sweaty and prickly in the Brazilian heat. He preferred it that way. It was a reminder each day of his own true insignificance, of the fact that his suffering paled in the face of Christ’s. He might have admitted, if asked, that it was partly childish rebellion; rebellion against the silken robes and soft beds of Houseman and his ilk. Now he slept on a hard pallet and wore fabric that left bright red, itching patterns on his skin. He preferred it that way. The pain held him down, kept him humble, reminded him of his true purpose. Not to work for his own glory, but the glory of God.

 

He reached both hands out in front of him, examining the wounds. They had been there steadily for the past ten years, though they had come and gone at intermittent periods before that. There was pain there too, but it never felt like pain. It felt like the love of God shining down onto him. It felt like salvation.

 

The bandages that covered the wounds were several days old, and crusted with dried blood. With his right hand, he slowly peeled off the one on his left. There was no pain there now, nor joy- just the slight pinch of the bandage separating from his flesh. He frowned. Surely the wound should still ache? It had never failed to before.

 

As the bandage came free, he let it fall to the floor of his cell, heedless of the mess it would make. He could only stare, transfixed, at his wrist. Where there had been a hole before, striking clear through to the other side, there was only smooth skin. Not even a scar was left to pit the wrist; no reminder of what had been there. Frantically, he scrabbled at the other arm, clumsy in his desperation. He flung the bandage aside and stared in horror at what he saw: once more, the skin was smooth and unblemished. He turned his hands over. There was nothing there; no sign, no message, only blankness.

 

He clasped his hands together, hard enough that his fingers protested at the strain. He ignored the pain; the pain was good; the pain was a gift. The pain was a sign that he had not been forgotten. He prostrated himself before the cross, wishing for a whip, a hairshirt- something to bring him back into the light of God. His lips moved over the rosary beads, reciting prayers that he had known all his life, but they were empty now. He could find no spirit in them, only words. “ _From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Catholic_ -”

 

He stuttered and came to a halt. Was that it? Had the Lord tired of his vainglorious attachment to the crucifix and left him to his earthly attachments? He struggled to his feet, reaching blindly for the cross on the wall. It was heavy- solid walnut, an affectation, a sign of his greed- and would not come away easily, but with a final wrench, he sent it clattering to the floor. There was a shuddering _crack_ , and a split appeared down the middle of the crucifix where he had dropped it. Alameida staggered backwards, clutching his arm as it began to throb. He raised both arms to examine his wrists again. Surely now God would answer his prayers?

 

But there was nothing; the skin lay smooth and pale as it had before. With a cry of anguish, he whirled and stumbled from the cell, past the church gardens and the early-morning gardeners. One called out to him- “ _Pai! Bom dia!_ -” but he kept going, ignoring the progressive ache in his arm and the burning in his lungs until he reached the altar. The other crucifix- the true one- hung over the apse, the carved face of Jesus staring down upon him as his mother Mary did from the corner. He had thought, once, that he saw the wooden saviour weeping tears of blood; now he knew it could not have been. Jesus would not weep for a sinner like him.

 

He staggered up the nave and fall to his knees again, before the alter. Nearly losing his balance, he weaved forward, grasping at the altar cloth for support. The Communion chalice overbalanced and crashed down upon his head, drenching him in wine. He raised his hands to it, bringing his fingers to his mouth and licking them clean. Was this his salvation? Was the Lord trying to reach him?

 

“Soul of Christ, make me holy,” he prayed. His breath was growing shorter. “Body of Christ, be my salvation. Blood of Christ, let me drink your wine. Water flowing from the side of Christ, wash me clean. Passion- passion of Christ, strengthen me-” His vision was growing darker. He raised a hand, and saw the rosary still wrapped around it- the Vatican’s rosary, the one he had brought with him to Brazil. With a final hoarse cry, he flung it down the nave, watching it skid to the end of the aisle and out of his sight. He gasped as the world clouded over, and toppled forward, arms still outstretched towards the church doors. He gave one last shudder, and was still. Above him, though he could not see it, blood ran red from Mary’s eyes.

 

The church fell silent. Only the faint patter of bloodred tears against the marble floor broke the still morning quiet, but no one was there to hear them. Outstretched on the tiles, Alameida’s wrists bloomed scarlet again. His body stayed face-down on the floor.

 

The back door opened, and the quiet was broken by the squeak of wheels. The morning custodian came in, pushing his bucket in front of him, humming “Jesus Is Just Alright” under his breath. He paused at the entrance and stooped, gathering the fallen rosary beads in his hands. Who would have dropped their rosary and left without noticing? He snorted. Kids, most likely. If they didn’t want it, he might be able to sell it at the market. He tucked it in his pocket and pushed on. Coming to the nave of the church, he halted. Why did the air smell so sweet? No one had brought flowers.

 

He looked down the aisle. His eyes widened, and his hands twitched, dropping the handle of the mop. The prone body of the priest lay in the nave, arms outstretched on either side, face-down on the floor. The custodian backed away, holding both hands out before him. “ _Meu Deus_ ,” he breathed. Spinning on his heel, he dashed for the door, shouting for help. Alameida’s body was left alone on the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

The alarm went off three times before Frankie groped her way out from under the blanket and slapped the snooze button. Peering out from under her pillow, she eyed the clock and groaned. 8:17. Technically, she wasn’t late- yet- but she wasn’t early either, and if she didn’t get her ass out of bed, she _would_ be late.

 

The phone shrilled loudly in the distance, as if irritated that she hadn’t gotten up yet. “Coming!” she called to no one in particular and pulled herself out of bed, gathering up the robe she’d dropped on the floor the previous night. No sign of Steven, of course. She’d more or less given up on hoping for him to act like an actual boyfriend and stick around after the sex, so it didn’t sting anymore. For the most part.

 

The phone kept going, so she broke into a trot, and grabbed it on the sixth ring. “Hey Mom.”

 

“Frankie?” Her mom’s voice crackled over the lines- long distance. “How did you know it was me?”

 

“You have a very persistent ring.” With her free hand, Frankie grabbed a teabag from the cupboard and dropped it into her mug. She turned the tap on and held it under the water as her mother chattered. “-in this village called Bela Quinto. Have you heard of it?”

 

Frankie switched the water off and put her mug in the microwave. “Yeah, we covered it in my Brazilian geography class.”

 

“Ha, ha. Anyway, I sent you some souvenirs on Tuesday. Have they arrived yet?”

 

“One second.” Flipping the microwave on, Frankie padded out to the front hallway where she’d left yesterday’s mail. Sure enough, there was a brown paper box sitting on her hall table. “Yeah, got it.”

 

“Have you looked inside yet?”

 

“No, but I am now.” With her fingernail, Frankie split the tape on the box’s flaps and opened it. Inside was a miniature broom, an equally tiny hat, and . . . “A necklace? It’s pretty.”

 

“Well it’s not a necklace, exactly- it’s a rosary. You know, that thing Catholics use to pray?”

 

Frankie sighed, and set the box down. “Mom . . .”

 

“I know, I know.” It may have just been the weak connection, but her mother’s voice sounded suddenly distant. “Anyway, I just wanted to talk to you before I left this afternoon- I’m going on a hike in the mountains, so I won’t be able to get in touch with you.”

 

The microwave beeped. Startled, Frankie fumbled with the phone as she reached out to grab her mug. “Okay, Mom. Watch out for jaguars.”

 

Her mother laughed, normal again. “I don’t think there are any in this part of Brazil, but I’ll make sure. I love you, honey.”

 

“Love you too. Bye.” Frankie clicked on the off button, and dropped the phone into its cradle with a sigh. Her mom had gotten weird since she’d started going back to church- well weird by her standards, which mostly just meant talking about God a lot and dropping endless hints about how great it would be if Frankie started going to church. Stuff like “the ladies at St. Michael’s would all love to meet you” and “did you know the Vatican is actually thinking of changing their stance on birth control?” and “you know, the deacon has a son about your age I think you’d really get along with.” Since her “hook Frankie up with Jesus” campaign had been unsuccessful so far, she guessed Mom was going for a “look, the church gives you jewelery!” approach now. It was somewhat less pressure than being prodded to date the deacon’s kid, she guessed, but she still needed to figure out a way to convince her mother that she and God just weren’t going to happen.

 

Sipping from her mug, she dangled the necklace- rosary- in front of her face, examining it. It really did look like a necklace- like the crucifix jewelry Donna sometimes wore. Instead of being suspended on a gold chain, the cross dangled on the end of a string of shiny wooden beads. It also smelled nice, which wasn’t something she’d ever associated with necklaces, but- she brought it to her nose and sniffed- it had a faint aroma of flowers, like it’d been packed in potpourri. Weird.

 

The door buzzer sounded, and Frankie dropped the beads on the table and padded over. “Yeah?”

 

“It’s me,” Donna’s voice crackled over the speaker. “You coming down, or should I tell Patty you’ve got food poisoning?”

 

Frankie grinned. “I’ll be right there.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You’ve got something in your hand.”

 

Frankie looked down. Sure enough, wrapped around her key ring was the rosary from earlier. She must have grabbed it off the table along with her keys. “Shit, I meant to leave that at home.”

 

“Can I see it?” Frankie shrugged and passed it over. “Present from Mom. I think she’s trying to bribe me.”

 

Donna, who was already familiar with the Get Frankie To Church Campaign, held it up and squinted at it. “Shit, she got you a rosary? That’s not bribery, that’s a kickback.”

 

Frankie rolled her eyes, grinning. “I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing, Donna.”

 

“Not when it works.” Donna frowned and sniffed the air. “What smells like flowers?”

 

While Frankie explained the box of gifts, the propped her elbow up on the car door and watched the city fly by outside. When she’d moved to Pittsburgh, her parents had thrown twin fits about it. Dad had gone off about the lack of jobs and the climate and football (which, okay, he was probably joking about that last one) while her mother had begged her to move to someplace a bit less crime-ridden, or at least less smoggy. Riding off her newly-acquired diploma and a job offer, Frankie hadn’t cared. She still didn’t. The city was everything her parents had said and more- it hadn’t stopped raining all week, she was still in the job she’d moved there to take, and there’d been three muggings on her block in the last month alone. But it was _her_ city. Somewhere along the line, Pittsburgh had become her home, and all the parental fussing in the world wasn’t going to drag her out. They’d have to carry her first.

 

“Cool,” Donna said, breaking into her thoughts.

 

Frankie raised her eyebrows. “ _Cool_? You know she’s just going to keep doing this.”

 

Donna shrugged. “Yeah, but at least you get sweet jewelery out of it. It looks like the ones the nuns at school used to wear.”

 

“You said the nuns at school used to throw erasers at you guys!”

 

“Well _some_ of them did,” Donna said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “There were some cool ones, though. Sister Jean dyed her hair green and took off her habit to show us when the Mother Superior wasn’t in the room. You could be, like, a cool punk nun instead of an asshole eraser-throwing one.”

 

“Yeah,” Frankie said, reaching over to tug the rosary out of Donna’s hand, “I’d make a _great_ nun. Miss Celibacy, that’s me.”

 

Donna just shrugged. “Whatever, you know some of those nuns were all up in each other’s-”

 

“Donna!” Frankie swatted her with the rosary. “Don’t you guys go to hell for saying shit like that? Besides-” She grinned evilly- “-I’d be happier debauching the priests.”

 

Donna laughed. “Which reminds me, heard from Steven?”

 

“Sex with priests make you think of _Steven_?” Frankie blinked. “I worry about you sometimes.”

 

“Not that.” Donna waved a hand impatiently. “He told Darren that he was going to take that job in Harrisburg. He didn’t mention it?”

 

Frankie’s stomach sank. “Nope. Didn’t say anything.” _Especially not last night when we were fucking in_ my bed _. Asshole._

“Oh.” Donna patted her knee. “Well, he said he’s not leaving until the end of the week. You could probably say goodbye to him before then.”

 

Frankie curled her lip. “Why would I wanna do that?”

 

Donna nodded, and they spent the rest of the car ride in silence, Frankie stewing quietly to herself. She didn’t have any reason to be pissed, really. It wasn’t like they’d been together, or dating, or anything but screwing occasionally. She didn’t want anything more than that; she’d occasionally listened to him when they weren’t sleeping together, and he was kind of a douche. So what if he was taking off without calling? Good riddance.

 

Asshole.

 

When they got to the salon, Patty had already opened up, and was cheerfully blasting the Smashing Pumpkins over the loudspeaker while sharpening her nail file. She waved a pair of clippers at them as they came in. “Hey guys!”

 

“I can’t hear you over the music!” Frankie yelled back, but Patty just shrugged and went back to bobbing her head along to the song. Frankie grinned. Guys came and went, but some things never changed, and Patty’s Billy Corgan fixation was one of them.

 

They fell into the rhythm of the day easily- people started coming through the doors at ten, and they had a steady stream of customers until closing at five. Counting up the register, Donna slapped a hand down on the counter triumphantly. “Five hundred and fifty!”

 

Frankie glanced up from her station. “Before or after taxes?”

 

“Before, smartass.” Patty skirted around the counter to grab Donna in a hug. “But this week’s take is enough to get us out of the hole and replace the busted straightener, so quit your bitching.” She glanced over. “You coming to the Jackpot tonight? They’re having a three-for-one on rum cocktails.”

 

Frankie shook her head fondly at them. “I’ll be there.”

 

And she was, although she almost changed her mind before Donna showed up to drag her out the door. She’d gotten a weird ache in her hands sometime in the afternoon, which she dismissed as sore muscles- could you get carpal tunnel from cutting hair?- but around dinnertime, it had been joined with a weird floating sensation, like she was barely tethered to her body, and a vague headache behind her eyes. Basically, she felt crappy, but she’d promised to be there, and the free cocktails would at least put off the headache for another few hours. Plus, she didn’t have work in the morning.

 

Her headache only intensified when she stepped through the doors- the music seemed louder than usual, though maybe her ears were just sensitive- so after she dropped Donna off with Patty, she headed over to the bar to start drinking it away. The bartender, who knew her by now, nodded as he mixed the first drink. “Bad week?”

 

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she groaned, and downed half the cocktail in one gulp. It burned going down, which was weird, because this was pretty low on the alcohol scale- there was more Grenadine than rum- and she’d never had a problem drinking it before. Maybe she was coming down with something.

 

“Heyyy, baby!”

 

 _Oh for fuck_ _’s sake_. She took another swig from the drink and turned around to face Steven- who, as usual, was dressed like he was trying to be a greaser and failing, and yet somehow looked really stupidly hot.

 

Emphasis on the “stupid.”

 

“Missed you this morning,” she said coolly, taking another sip. Headache aside, the alcohol was starting to feel better and better. It made Steven that much more tolerable, for starters.

 

“Well, you know how it is.” He tried to sling an arm over her shoulder, but removed it at a look. “Places to see, people to do. Wanna go home with me tonight, or did I wear you out already?”

 

She chose to ignore that. “Donna says you’re moving to Harrisburg.”

 

“Yeah baby, this guy whose girlfriend used to date my cousin needs a new mechanic since the last one quit and Bob told him I had skills, so I’m moving out at the end of the week.” He moved in to try and bite Frankie’s earlobe, but she shoved him off. “You gonna miss me, baby?”

 

“Maybe I’ll miss your dick,” she allowed, staring at the bottom of her glass. The headache was coming back. “You, not so much.”

 

He pouted. “You don’t have to be bitchy about it.”

 

“I’m not.” She waved an arm at the bartender, who started to pour her another glass. “If I was _really_ being bitchy, you’d know.” The bartender handed her the drink, and she took a gulp from it. _Much_ better.

 

“You mad at me or something?” He pouted again. It was getting less attractive every time he tried it. “What’d I do?”

 

She still had a free cocktail to drink, but she suddenly felt too tired to order it. In addition to her hands and head, her stomach had apparently joined the pain party. She probably _was_ coming down with something- either that, or she had one hell of a case of PMS. “You didn’t do anything.” She grabbed her jacket and slid off the bar stool. “Hope you like Harrisburg.”

 

She tried to track down Patty and Donna on the dance floor, but by the time she tracked them down- they were swaying to “Last Kiss” and Frankie didn’t want to break in just to tell them she was taking off. They’d figure it out anyway, and if the way they were dancing was any indication, they wouldn’t notice she was missing until next morning at the earliest. She waved goodbye just in case, trying not to feel a pang of jealousy, and headed out.

 

When she got back to her apartment, she tossed her jacket onto her armchair and went straight for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She shook two capsules of Tylenol out into her hand before deciding “fuck it” and taking two more. She was too wiped to go into the kitchen for a glass, so she just scooped up a handful of water from the tap and washed them down with that before staggering into her bedroom and falling onto the bed. She managed to kick off her shoes and jeans, but figured that anything else was overkill and getting in the way of her main goal, which was getting the fuck to sleep long enough for her head, stomach, and hands to stop tag-teaming her. She stuck her head under the pillow and fell asleep.

 

The dream started immediately, but it wasn’t like any other dream she’d had before. There was nothing linear about it, just a barrage of images assaulting her subconscious, each screaming at the top of their lungs. There were rocks thudding to the ground at her aching feet, thrown to the tune of jeers and screams from the surrounding crowd. She couldn’t see any faces, just a bright, dust-clouded mass of people, all clamouring for her blood. Her hands were being wrenched away from her on either side and dragged high in the air as her eyes began to cloud over, obscuring her view of the ground. _Oh, my Father, why do they hurt me?_

When the first blow stuck, a scream ripped itself from her mouth, loud enough to silence her tormentors. She hadn’t meant to cry out- some of them would come to regret this day, and she didn’t want to make their guilt worse. They surged forward again, louder than before, screaming and baying like hounds on the scent. She knew her mother was in the crowd somewhere, but she couldn’t see her. A fine red mist had risen over her eyes, and intensified with each fresh blow. She wondered if she would die now, before they even raised the cross. She wondered if her mother would be permitted to mourn. _Father, make her way light. Ease her pain._ Did He hear her?

 

She woke with a jerk, slamming both hands down on the mattress as she sat up in bed. Her breath was coming in shallow pants, chest heaving like she’d run a marathon. She’d never had a nightmare like that before- not one that had woken her up. And it had felt so real- she could still feel the nails piercing her wrists, the heat pounding down on her head. What the hell had been in that Tylenol?

 

The sheets underneath her felt sticky and damp, and when she kicked the covers off, she saw that her guess about PMSing had been right- and just to make her life that much easier, her period had showed up overnight, drenching the sheets. Ugh, it looked like she’d been sleeping in a fucking _puddle_. Her underwear was wrecked, the sheets were too, and she’d probably have to empty out the mattress to scrub it as well. What a fanfucking _tastic_ way to spend her Saturday.

 

She twisted around to grab a tampon from her nightstand and frowned. There were cherry-red smears across the sheets next to her pillows- where she had most definitely not been sitting, unless she’d thrashed around in that nightmare way more than she’d thought. Plus, it wasn’t the same colour. The sheets around her waist were dark red, brownish in places, where the stains by her pillow were brighter. Either she’d bled in two different places at two different times, or she’d bled _two separate types of blood_ in two different places. What the hell?

 

She was raising her hand to her nose to check for a nosebleed when she saw it. Her arm was drenched in blood from the wrist down, drying and flaking from her sleeves. The blood was still seeping out from a tiny hole in her wrist- almost dead centre. She raised her other arm. Same thing.

 

“The _fuck_?”


	3. Chapter 3

She went to the emergency room. She wouldn’t have, normally- she didn’t have insurance, she didn’t like being poked and prodded, and she got sick so rarely that it seemed pointless. But she wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t self-destructive, and mysterious holes being poked through her wrists while she was asleep seemed like a pretty damn good reason to break her “no emergency rooms” rule.

 

She thought about calling Donna and Patty to let them know, but decided against it- it was only eight in the morning, and they were probably sleeping in. She’d call later, when they were more likely to be awake. Maybe around ten, if she hadn’t seen a doctor by then- Patty could stare down uncooperative receptionists like no one else, as Frankie had discovered when they’d gone to apply for their business license. She did leave Donna’s number with the receptionist as a contact, just in case she keeled over and they had to call someone to authorize the doctor to give her Demoral or something. Which, well, not that she’d object.

 

She perched on the edge of a chair in the emergency room, arms resting uncomfortably on her knees. She didn’t have gauze or anything like that at home, so she’d had to make do with a cut-up ace bandage from when she’d twisted her ankle last year. Bright spots of blood were already showing through the elastic, and if they kept going, they were probably going to bleed onto her jeans as well. Her stomach was still cramped all to hell as well- she hadn’t taken any Tylenol before leaving in case it screwed with whatever the doctors wanted to give her- and her headache was back in full force. Weirdly enough, the only part of her that _didn_ _’t_ hurt were her hands. Her wrists felt wet and raw where they rubbed against the makeshift bandages, but there wasn’t any actual pain. Maybe she’d tied them so tightly they’d gone numb. It was preferable to more aches and pains, anyway.

 

The doctors took exactly as long as she’d expected to show up. She was considering walking up to the nurse’s station and asking whether they were waiting for her to pass out on the floor before seeing her when a clipboard-carrying orderly appeared in the doorway. “Ms. Paige? Doctor Lloyd will see you now.”

 

She was ushered into an examination room off the hallway, handed a paper hospital gown (which she didn’t put on; she had holes through her wrists, not her back) and was told to sit and wait before Clipboard Orderly vanished. She perched on the edge of the examination table, resisting the urge to swing her feet back and forth like she was a little kid. She _felt_ like a little kid, waiting for someone to tell her what was wrong with her. She hated it. She felt, irrationally, like calling her mom and sobbing the whole shitty day out, but Mom was in Brazil and had no phone, and she couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

 

Finally, Dr. Lloyd appeared in the doorway, holding another damn clipboard. Frankie wondered if it was a fetish around here. “All right,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “What seems to be the problem?”

 

Frankie extended both arms. “I woke up with holes in my wrists.”

 

Dr. Lloyd set the clipboard down and came over, unwinding the bandages and frowning at Frankie’s wrists. “That’s- hmm.” She glanced up. “You said you woke up with these?”

 

Frankie nodded. “Uh-huh.”

 

She turned Frankie’s wrists over, frowning at the holes. “Have you been feeling a lot of stress lately? Money worries? Relationship problems?”

 

Frankie blinked. “Not much, I-” She stopped and stared at the doctor, who met her eyes steadily. “You think I did this to _myself_?”

 

The doctor dropped her wrists, and Frankie folded her arms over her chest mutinously. “Wounds don’t spontaneously appear like you’re describing, Frankie.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Frankie said. “These did. Look, do I need stitches or drugs or-”

 

Dr. Lloyd held up a hand. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute first- just humour me, okay?” she said as Frankie sighed. “You’re not suffering any kind of stress? Upheaval?”

 

“No,” Frankie said firmly. “I love my job. I love my mom. I love my friends. I don’t have any reason to hurt myself. That’s _it_.”

 

The doctor frowned at her. “You said you loved your mother, but you didn’t mention your dad. Is he not in your life?”

 

Frankie bit the inside of her cheek. “He’s dead. Died last year.”

 

“And how do you feel about that?”

 

“How do you think I feel?” Frankie snapped. “It feels pretty crappy, okay? But it was a year ago and I’m not enough of an asshole to try and kill myself and leave my mom to deal with the mess.”

 

“Frankie-”

 

“Look,” she interrupted, “I don’t know how else I can explain this. I. Didn’t. Do this. And if you can’t tell me what did, I’d like to go home now. Give give me stitches or drugs or whatever I need-”

 

“Stitches first,” the doctor said gently. “I’d like to keep you for observation, just to make sure-”

 

“That I don’t do it again?” Frankie slid off the examination table and grabbed her jacket. “Not gonna happen. Can I just get whatever you need to give me and get out of here?” When the doctor hesitated, she added “You can’t keep me here against my will.”

 

The doctor sighed. “You’re very stubborn, Frankie.”

 

Frankie scowled. “So I’ve been told.”

 

In the end, they gave her the stitches and let her go. The doctor who stitched her up- not Dr. Lloyd; Frankie guessed they had special stitch doctors for this sort of thing- kept peering at her wrists and prodding at the wounds until Frankie wanted to tell him to just take a picture if he was that into it. But they finished the stitches and let her go after giving her- thank God- a bottle of painkillers. Frankie mentally took back every nasty thing she’d thought about the whole hospital experience.

 

Patty and Donna were waiting for her out in the parking lot, and Donna raced over to hug her as soon as she emerged from the doors. “Frankie! Are you okay? The receptionist called and said you were in the emergency room but she didn’t say why.”

 

Frankie made a mental note to send the receptionist a bottle of wine or something. “I’m fine,” she said, hugging her back. “I woke up bleeding this morning and I didn’t want to take any chances, so I went in to get checked out.”

 

“That’s it?” Patty said, frowning. “Shit, that happens to me once a month.”

 

“That too,” Frankie sighed. “But something weird was going on with my wrists. See-” She shook out her sleeves, and both Donna and Patty’s eyes widened at the bandages.

 

“Frankie,” Donna breathed, “did you-”

 

“Donna,” Frankie said. “You’re my friend, and you know I love you, but I just had a conversation with the doctor that lasted like five minutes longer than it should have, and if you say ‘do this to yourself,’ I’m going to have to hit you.” Donna didn’t look convinced, so she added “Come on, when have I _ever_ tried to hurt myself like this?”

 

Patty nodded. “She’s got a point.”

 

“Damn straight I do,” Frankie pulled her sleeves back down. “Now can we head back to my place? I still have to clean everything up from-” she checked her watch. “-this morning. Shit. Well there goes half my day.”

 

The car ride back to her apartment was spent filling the air with aimless chatter- mostly from Patty and Donna, as if they were afraid Frankie would pull out a hidden razor and start slicing herself up if they were quiet for more than a minute. Frankie didn’t mind. She drew her knees up to her chest and listened, occasionally punctuating their sentences with a nod or a laugh as they recounted what had gone down at the club last night after she’d left or what their customers had been telling them in the shop. She’d heard most of the customers’ stories before- she worked a few feet away from them, after all- but she still listened, grateful to have something to focus on that wasn’t her still-cramping stomach or the _fucking holes in her wrists_.

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit,” Patty said as they stepped into her bedroom. “Are you sure you didn’t sacrifice a goat in here or something?”

 

Frankie couldn’t exactly blame her for thinking it. Her sheets, still soaked through with dried blood, were scattered across the floor where she’d dropped them after noticing her wrists, and there was blood streaked across the floorboards from where she’d made a scramble for the bathroom. If she hadn’t known any better, she’d think something _had_ died there.

 

“Nope,” she said with a sigh, stepping over to the pile of sheets. “Just me. You guys sure you want to hang out and held clean this up? It’s your day off.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Donna shucked her coat off. “We’re your friends, c’mon. What goes first?”

 

They ended up dragging the sheets out to her bathtub and leaving them to soak in cold water- they could have just dumped them in the laundry chute, but if the washing machine got clogged with dried blood, Frankie figured the super might actually throw her out. The mattress cover did go straight into the laundry though, and the mattress itself- which had stains on it _because of course it did_ \- just got scrubbed and left next to the window to dry out. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the Vicodin Dr. Lloyd had given her kicked in, and she was blissfully pain-free for what felt like the first time in ages.

 

“Whoa, Frankie,” Patty called from the kitchen. “What’s all this on your table? It looks like a tourist board threw up over here.”

 

“Stuff from my mom,” Frankie called back, smiling lazily. Man, painkillers were awesome. She felt just as floaty as she had yesterday afternoon, but now it was a general kind of walking-on-sunshine floatiness rather than a I-may-or-may-not-be-connected-to-my-body floatiness. “She’s still in Brazil.”

 

Patty emerged from the kitchen, dangling Frankie’s rosary from her hand. “She go on the church tour or something?”

 

Frankie grabbed the beads from her. “She went to some church out in the suburbs.”

 

“The Brazilian suburbs?”

 

“Guess so.” Frankie turned the rosary over in her hands. She’d forgotten she had it, actually; after all the shit that had gone down yesterday and this morning, it had kind of slipped her mind, and she’d forgotten to put her mom;s gifts away. She wondered where exactly you stored a useless rosary. Was she going to get hit with a lightning bolt if she just tossed it in a box and forgot about it?

 

Curious, she held the beads up to her nose and sniffed. The floral smell from yesterday was gone- now it just smelled kind of woody and oily. Frankie shrugged and stuffed it in her pocket.

 

Donna emerged from the bathroom, a wrinkled towel in her hand. “I think that’s the last of it.” She tossed the towel to Frankie, who caught it and pulled a face at her. “Are you gonna lie down for awhile, Frankie? You’ve had a hell of a day.”

 

Frankie shrugged and dropped the towel on the table. “Maybe for a bit. I was thinking about going to the Jackpot tonight.”

 

Donna and Patty exchanged a look over Frankie’s head that she pretended not to notice. “Are you sure?” Donna said gently. “I mean, your wrists.”

 

“They’re fine.” Frankie extended both arms out in front of her. “See? They’re barely even bleeding anymore. Besides, sore wrists aren’t gonna stop me from dancing. And they owe me a free cocktail.”

 

“You can’t drink while you’re on Vicodin.” Patty pointed out.

 

“Dammit.” Frankie sighed and slumped into the chair. “Well I can still go dancing anyway. You in?”

 

They exchanged another look. Frankie ignored them again.

 

“Yeah,” Donna said. “Sure thing.”

 

* * *

 

The Jackpot- so named, Frankie assumed, to make people think they were a transplant from Vegas- had been around for at least as long as she had been living in Pittsburgh, and she, Donna, and Patty had been going for as long as they’d been working together. It had a kind of carnivalish atmosphere, with people dancing up on the platform and performers coming in on Saturday nights. Vegas or no Vegas, it was the perfect place to shake off a shitty day, which was exactly what Frankie intended to do. Fuck her wrists, fuck Steven, fuck those people at the hospital who had no idea what they were talking about- she was going to have a damn good time if it was the last thing she did.

 

She left Donna and Patty at the bar- their cocktails looked tempting, but she could still feel the Vicodin swimming in her blood- and headed out onto the dance floor. She’d worn a shirt with long sleeves, not wanting to explain to any potential dance partners why she had bloodstained cotton wrapped around her wrists, but it was an open shirt with a tank top underneath, and she felt pretty fucking hot. Almost as soon as she hit the floor, she caught the eye of a guy standing next to the platform, who grinned wolfishly and crooked a finger at her. She sauntered on over, hoping that the sway in her step could be mistaken for seductive instead of drug-induced.

 

“Hey,” he said as she drew level with him. “Here on your own?”

 

“Depends,” she said. “Who wants to know?”

 

“My name’s Kenny,” he said, “and my buddy over there’s Tom. You want a drink?” He had two glasses in his hand; he brought one up to sip from while offering the other to Frankie.

 

She shook her head, laughing. “Do I look like an idiot?”

 

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He took the glass he’d been offering and downed it in one gulp. “Wanna dance?”

 

The music blaring from overhead had changed to some kind of weird thumping techno number, the kind that drowned out any attempt at conversation- or for that, matter, thinking, which was exactly what Frankie wanted. She nodded.

 

Out on the dance floor, she began to swing her hips back and forth, head tossed back, lower lip caught between her teeth. Kenny came up behind her and pressed his nose against her neck and she let him, leaning back into him as she moved. The other guy, Tom, came drifting over and grabbed her waist She just laughed and tossed her head again. She could see Donna and Patty staring at her from the edge of the dance floor, but she just grinned lazily and waved a hand at them. Who cared about the trainwreck the past twenty-four hours had been? She felt _awesome_. Either it was the music or the Vicodin, but she didn’t much care either way, because she was having a damn good time.

 

The first flash of pain came and went so fast, she thought it was a split-second return of her headache. She shook her head to try and lose it and kept going. The second one, though, gripped her whole head in a vise, making her double over in agony, both hands clutched to her forehead. The only reason she didn’t fall to her knees was because Tom and Kenny were bracketing her and she literally couldn’t even if she wanted to. The roar of the club receded into the background, replaced with the screams of the crowd. _It was happening again_.

 

She could feel the soldier’s hands on her head, pressing down the crown of thorns that had been made for her, for her punishment; she had dared, she had transgressed, she had placed herself above her station, and in their eyes, she was a criminal. How could they call her by that title when so many had died for it? The innocents, all the children who had suffered for her, died for her. She wanted to explain the truth, that she didn’t want to replace Pilate, she didn’t want to be king, but she couldn’t. They couldn’t know, and they wouldn’t listen.

 

“King of the Jews!” jeered the soldier who had crowned her. He turned to the crowd and repeated it, and they took up the cry, mocking, sarcastic. “ _King of the Jews! King of the Jews!_ ”

 

“I’m no one’s king,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t make herself heard over the crowd. All around her, there were mocking faces, sneering and spitting at her. Her eyes swept the crowd. Where was Simon? Where was Mary?

 

“Frankie!”

 

Blood was dripping into her eyes; she couldn’t see.

 

“ _Frankie_!”

 

There were hands on her shoulders, holding her up, holding her steady. She blinked, and Donna’s face came into focus. “Oh my god, Frankie, are you okay? What happened?”

 

“I-” Frankie tried to sit up, but something was holding her in place. She blinked the blood out of her eyes and looked around. She was on the club floor, sitting where she’d been dancing a minute ago. Donna was kneeling in front of her, a hand on each of her shoulders, staring at her. She looked horrified. “I don’t know.”

 

“Did these guys hurt you?” It was Patty. She was standing behind Donna, along with the two guys she’d been dancing with. Both of them looked equally shocked, and one was shaking his head violently. “No, dude no way- she just freaked out all of a sudden. We didn’t do anything, I swear.”

 

The other one just looked at her anxiously. “You okay?”

 

Frankie put a hand up to her forehead. It came away sticky with fresh blood that seemed to be oozing from a series of cuts. She looked up again. All four of them, her friends and the two strangers, were staring at her with a mixture of horror and pity, and she could almost hear what they were thinking. “ _She_ _’s lost it._ ”

 

Frankie lurched to her feet, shaking off Donna’s hands. All four of them backed off suddenly, as if they were afraid her crazy was contagious. “I’m fine,” she muttered. “I- I have to go.” She turned and took off through the crowd, ignoring Donna and Patty shouting after her. She felt like she was choking. She had to get outside.

 

Her forehead was still bleeding profusely, and the blood was dripping down her face, into her hair and onto her shirt. She was glad she didn’t have a mirror handy, because she probably looked like some kind of horror movie escapee. She put both hands out in front of her, pushing blindly at the people in her path. She had to get out, out _out_. She stumbled through the front doors and bent double, hands on her knees, drawing deep breaths of air into her lungs. She still felt like her mind was sliding away from her, like she was still- wherever that had been, that place that was _definitely_ not the club, with the blood and the thorns and the screaming. _What the fuck is happening to me?_

 

* * *

 

It had been a discouraging day at St. Anthony’s- discouraging enough to try Father Derning’s patience, which wasn’t something that happened very often. He’d spent the morning hearing confession from parishioners, most of whom had been coming to confess that they had been backsliding since their last confession- three with alcohol, two with extramarital affairs. Then someone had vandalized the children's room downstairs, breaking several of the toys that had been donated by the Daughters of Charity. This has led to his spending the afternoon in conference with the administrator and the facilities manager, both of whom had insisted that they close and lock the church doors at night to prevent the building’s being vandalized again. He had spent three hours arguing with them about the need for open doors to shelter the homeless, but they had stuck to their position, and he had eventually acquiesced. By the time he’d left that evening, he was more emotionally and spiritually exhausted than he remembered being for a long time, and he wanted very little other than to go home and sleep.

 

With a sigh, he drew the church keys out of his pocket and locked the front doors. The side doors had always been closed and sealed by the deacon, who had been distressingly happy to do so. A notice, he saw, had been posted at the front of the church informing people who might stop by that the doors were locked. He wondered if the deacon thought their parishioners would be unable to understand the concept of a locked door.

 

When he heard a commotion across the street, he did not turn around at first. Being situated across the street from a nightclub had had little impact on the attendance at St. Anthony’s, though the clubgoers had rarely crossed the street to enter the church. Moreover, fights and carousing on the sidewalk was a fairly common occurence, and Father Derning rarely intervened unless it looked like someone was being hurt. Now, he only turned around when he heard a scream. Crouched on the sidewalk was a fair-haired young woman who was clutching at her forehead, blood blooming from between her fingers. Around her, other clubgoers were milling anxiously, edging back from her, murmuring in voices that blended into an indistinguishable mass of noise. The one voice that rose above all the others was that of the girl on the ground, who moaned as she pressed her head to the pavement and clutched her hair with both hands.

 

Father Derning crossed the street in six strides and broke through the crowd surrounding the injured woman. They scattered almost instantly as he stepped forward, some of them muttering as they saw his collar. He bent over and grasped the woman by her shoulders. She was still babbling to herself, though the volume of her voice had lowered to the point that he couldn’t make out individual words.

 

She looked up, and he had to suppress a gasp as he saw the blood dripping down her forehead and into her eyes. Wet, disheveled hair was plastered to her face, and the blood was mixed with tears that made tracks against her skin. Her eyes were wild, and only grew wilder when they caught his collar.

 

“Father,” she whispered, “what’s happening to me?”

 

He was about to answer when she put both hands out to balance herself and he stopped in shock. Both of her wrists were wrapped in gauzy bandages, with round spots of blood showing through the fabric. He looked back at her forehead. It was hard to see through the blood, but there were gashes there- the kind of gashes that could conceivably have come from thorns. He swallowed hard.

 

“Don’t worry,” he said, grasping her hands in his. “I can help you.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Frankie blinked awake, the first thing she felt was an overwhelming sense of contentment. It was almost like waking up in her childhood bedroom at home, but instead of feeling her old flannel sheets on the mattress and hearing her mother humming as she made breakfast, the sheets were raggedy cotton and she could hear indistinct singing in the distance. She blinked. The ceiling overhead was dark wood, with beams that crisscrossed between the walls. The whole room was lit with a vaguely yellow light, like it was illuminated with a bunch of overbright candles. She blinked again, and turned her head. Next to her was a polished desk covered with papers and made of the same dark wood as the ceiling beams. A crucifix stood on the desk’s right corner.

 

“Hey sleeping beauty.”

 

Frankie raised her head. Patty was perched on a folding chair next to the bed, looking her with combined amusement and concern. “You slept for thirteen hours, you know that? I was starting to think about calling the hospital and asking what the hell they put in that Vicodin.”

 

Frankie raised her head groggily. “Where am I?”

 

“You don’t remember?”

 

Frankie shook her head. The last thing she could remember was staring up at the ceiling of the Jackpot, blood dripping down her forehead and into her eyes as the screams of the crowd echoed in her ears. There had been guys there, and Patty and Donna- had they carried her out? Was she in some kind of hospital? She took a deep breath, but she couldn’t smell any of the antiseptic odour she’d come to recognize as the hospital’s perfume. All she smelled was . . . incense?

 

“You’re at St Anthony’s,” Patty said gently. “You freaked out and started bleeding at the club last night, and a priest showed up and carried you over here. Seriously, you don’t remember _any_ of it?”

 

Frankie shook her head again, twisting around to get a better look at the room. It was office-sized, paneled with the same dark wood that made up the ceiling, and apart from her cot, it looked like it _was_ someone’s office. There was the desk sitting against the wall, with a leather armchair in front of it. Her bed was jammed into the opposite corner. “What time is it?”

 

“Nine in the morning.” Patty leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees and looking at Frankie appraisingly. “Donna was here for awhile last night, but I sent her home. You know she wouldn’t get any sleep unless she knew someone was looking out for you.”

 

“Yeah.” Frankie swing her legs over the side of the cot and stood up unsteadily. “The priest who brought me here- what was his name?” She still had no idea what was going on, but she figured she owed some thanks to the guy who’d scraped her off the sidewalk. Tentatively, she put a hand up to her forehead to feel for blood. There wasn’t much, but a few dried flakes did come off and stick to her fingers when she pulled her hand away. She could feel cuts there, deep slices that felt like they’d been made with a razor. They stung when she brushed her fingers against them, so she dropped her hand to her side.

 

“He said his name’s Father Derning,” Patty said. “He’s the pastor here. He said he knows what’s going on with you, but . . .”

 

Frankie turned to look at her. “But what?”

 

Patty gave her a searching look. “What _is_ going on, Frankie? All of a sudden you’re freaking out all over the place, you’re bleeding like crazy, you’re talking about all kinds of weird shit-”

 

“Weird shit?”

 

“At the club last night,” Patty said impatiently, “you were going on and on about how ‘they’ were calling you a king and they were wrong, and you were just- it’s like you went crazy, Frankie. Were you on something?”

 

The question sounded sincere enough, but Frankie scowled in response. “Are you really asking me that? You _know_ me. I don’t even get drunk that often.”

 

“Yeah, I know you.” Patty sighed. “And normally I wouldn’t ask, but- this is all so fucking _weird_. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Frankie pushed herself to her feet. “Neither do I.”

 

Patty nodded and got up. On her way to the door, she paused, one hand on the handle. “Donna’s really worried about you.”

 

Frankie rubbed a hand across her forehead, avoiding the cuts. “I know.”

 

Patty chewed on her bottom lip, apparently debating whether or not to continue. Frankie waited.

 

“Look, I-” Patty took a deep breath. “I worry about her, you know? If she thinks you’re sick or in trouble, she’ll freak out until things get better, and I don’t want to see her freak out.”

She paused. The silence stretched out between them until Frankie said “I know.”

 

“Yeah,” Patty sighed heavily. “Look I’m not going to tell you to, like, stay away from her or lie about what’s going on- whatever is going on- because that’s bullshit- but if you don’t have to let her know about it- just try not to, okay?”

 

Frankie stared at her. “So am I just supposed to lie? ‘Oh yeah everything’s totally fine I’m not bleeding from massive head wounds at all?’”

 

“I don’t know!” Patty threw her hands up. “Look, this whole thing is just _weird_ , okay? It’s fucking weird and I’m trying to deal, but Donna shouldn’t get dragged down with you. That’s not fair.”

 

Stung, Frankie could only keep staring at her. Patty dropped her gaze to the floor, flushing slightly. “Father Derning said he’d talk to you when Mass is over,” she mumbled before twisting the door handle and slipping out.

 

Frankie stood alone in the room for a long moment before burying her head in her hands. The headache from yesterday was coming back. She was starting to suspect it was there to stay. Normally she would have just popped an aspirin and gone on with her day, but normally she wouldn’t be standing in a church with scabby cuts on her forehead and one of her friends telling her that she was on her own. That was so far from fucking _normal_ , she barely knew how to catalogue it.

 

The faint singing from outside had stopped, which Frankie guessed meant that Mass was over, or almost over. She grabbed her jacket from the bed- it smelled like stale sweat, and there were dried blood drips along the collar- and headed out into the body of the church. The calm feeling from when she’d woken up was pretty much gone, but at least she could head home, shower and feel sorry for herself in peace. The only thing she had to do now saw thank Father Derning (and maybe ask him something like “so do you generally pick up stray face-bleeders or am I a special case?”) which hopefully wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. The walls of the church felt suddenly suffocating, and she wanted to get out and get a breath of fresh air.

 

The church was emptying as she came out, with only a few stragglers still seated in the pews. Most of them were congregated at the door, chatting quietly with a man she assumed was Father Derning- he was the only one wearing a collar. The lineup to talk to him looked long, so Frankie slid onto the end of a pew, next to a little kid who had her head bowed like she was praying. Maybe she was. _Probably_ she was. Frankie had never known any kids who were the type to sit still and pray, but maybe they all just hung out in churches.

 

Frankie had only been in churches once or twice- not out of any anti-religion sentiment, but just because she’d rarely had any reason to. Her parents had both been thoroughly blase on the subject of God, and so the only time she’d ever gone was when her grandparents were buried with a full ceremony at St. Jude’s. She’d been about seven at the time, and all she took away from the experience was the sensation of the stuffy, itchy clothes she’d been dressed in and the sermon about how they were all born sinners but luckily Jesus loved them anyway. Looking up at the crucifix in Father Derning’s church, she could easily see _this_ Jesus going “fuck it” and leaving them to die anyway. His face was twisted in agony, blood painted on his wrists, forehead, ankles, and side. Frankie wasn’t Jesus, not even close, but if she died like that- well, she might hold a grudge. Maybe that was why she’d never found it in herself to believe in him- not because he seemed like a bad guy, but because she couldn’t buy that anyone would stick around after suffering like that.

 

“You hurt your arm.”

 

Frankie jumped a little, and glanced to the side. The little girl who had been praying next to her had looked up, and was now staring at the bandages on Frankie’s wrists. Instinctively, she turned the wrist away to hide the bloodstains before realizing that the kid has probably seen them already anyway.

 

“I, uh.” Kids weren’t exactly her strong suit. “Yeah, I did.”

 

“I hurt mine too,” the girl said solemnly. Sure enough, her left arm was swathed in a brightly decorated cast and strapped to her side in a sling. The only part that was visible were four fingers sticking out from the cast, white and puffy. “What’s your name?”

 

Frankie smiled at her. “My name’s Frankie. What’s yours?”

 

“Rebecca,” she said. Her gaze was still eerily solemn. She couldn’t have been older than ten.

 

“Hmm,” Frankie said, unable to come up with anything else to say. Rebecca’s stare was starting to freak her out. “How’d you hurt your arm?”

 

The girl dropped her gaze and bit her lip. Frankie’s stomach clenched, like someone had just punched her and knocked the air out of her. She didn’t consider herself a master of the art of bullshit, but everything about the way the kid was reacting- the eyes, the downturned mouth, the scuffing of her feet against the floor like she was being shouted at- told a story, and it wasn’t a story Frankie ever, ever wanted to hear.

 

“I fell off my bike,” she said finally, so quiet that Frankie had to bend down to catch the words. She brought her free hand up to chew on her thumbnail, and mumbled her next words around the thumb. “And I broke my arm.”

 

Frankie sat back in the pew, feeling like someone had dropped a rock into her stomach. Rebecca was still looking downward, examining her shoes. Frankie glanced around, looking for anyone who could come and help-

 

Help _what_? It wasn’t like she could point to the kid and say “someone hurt her” with any kind of authority. For all she knew, she was being ridiculous and paranoid and the girl really _had_ fallen off her bike. But there was a feeling deep in her gut, all the way down to her bones, that she wasn’t wrong, no matter how badly she wanted to be. It wasn’t just the way the girl was acting. She couldn’t have said how she knew, but she just _did_. She was surer of this than she’d ever been of anything in her life. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. The silence stretching out between them was thick enough for her to choke on.

 

“Want me to sign your cast?” she offered, finally. It was the only thing she could think of. The cast already had several colourful scribbles that looked like they’d come from other little kids. Having a few more smiley faces scrawled on her arm wasn’t going to help Rebecca at all, but it was the only thing she could think of that she _could_ do.

 

The kid’s face broke into a cautious smile, and she pulled a fat purple marker from her pocket, holding it out to Frankie. Frankie took it and bent over the cast, wondering what to write. Her name? A picture? The number for a helpline? None would help this kid at all, and that was what gnawed at her as the marker grew sweaty in her fingers- the overwhelming impotence of it, of _her_ , towards someone that somebody should be taking care of. It burned in her gut and made her feel sick and powerless. She wanted to yell at someone, or kick something over, or do _something_. The irony of sitting in a church wondering why nobody was helping was not lost on her.

 

Eventually, she wrote “get well soon!” and added a smiley face to the end of the sentence in loopy cursive before patting the arm awkwardly and capping the marker. Rebecca pulled her arm back and examined it, a tiny smile cracking her solemn expression. Frankie smiled back at her. Her chest hurt.

 

“I have to go home now,” Rebecca announced, scrambling off the pew and trotting towards the back of the church. Frankie twisted in her seat to watch her go. The woman who had been standing at the church doors talking to Father Derning held a hand out to her, and Rebecca grabbed it, tucking her head under the woman- her mother’s, Frankie assumed. Father Derning smiled, patted her shoulder, and watched them leave before making his way to where Frankie sat on the pew.

 

“Miss Paige,” he said, drawing level with her. “I hope you’re feeling better this morning?”

 

“Yeah,” Frankie shifted uncomfortably on the pew. “That girl who just left- she’s a-” She couldn’t remember the right word. “-member? Of your church?”

 

He paused before answering. “Rebecca? Yes, she and her mother are parishioners here. I was the one who baptized her. Why do you ask?”

 

Frankie narrowed her eyes at him. “She’s hurt.”

 

There was another pause. Maybe she imagined it, but Frankie thought she saw a muscle in his cheek twitch. “Yes, she is.”

 

“Who hurt her?”

 

Father Derning let out a deep sigh and leaned against the pew. Under any other circumstances, Frankie would have felt sorry for him. He looked so drained. “She and her mother both told me that she fell off her bicycle. I don’t have any . . . reason to disbelieve them.”

 

She didn’t miss the hitch in his voice. “Any _reason_?”

 

He was avoiding her gaze, staring instead at the crucifix hanging over the altar. “I’ve never know either of them to be untrustworthy.”

 

Frankie pushed herself up off the pew, holding herself steady with one hand. “Well not that it’s any of my business, Father, but you might want to rethink that. She’s-” She stopped.

 

“She’s what?”

 

Frankie raised her head and met his gaze. “I think she’s lying.”

 

Father Derning sighed again, smoothing his hands down the front of his cassock. “She may be. She may not be. But my job as their priest is to offer counsel and comfort when it is asked for. I can’t give them something they don’t want.”

 

Frankie let her shoulders drop. “But I never asked for your help. I mean, I’m grateful, but I didn’t ask. If you only help people who ask for it, you could have left me on the sidewalk.” She pursed her mouth. “Why didn’t you?”

 

“Ah,” Father Derning said, smiling slightly. Frankie didn’t have the slightest idea what was so funny. “I crossed the street when I heard the commotion, and when your friends informed me of the extent of your injuries, I thought I might be able to help you. They’re . . .” He paused. “Significant.”

 

“Significant.” she repeated.

 

He rubbed a hand over his forehead, but the slight smile remained. “I’m not really qualified to explain. When you were brought back here, you were talking to yourself- do you remember any of it?”

 

Frankie shook her head slowly. Bits and pieces of the night before stood out in her memory- the faces leaning over her, the sensation of something slicing into her forehead, the people shouting around her- but she couldn’t remember saying anything. She didn’t even remember being carried in.

 

“You spoke a language I didn’t recognize,” he said gently, “though I have an- idea of what it might be. When you spoke in English, it was to tell me that you weren’t a king and that ‘they’ were wrong. Do you know who you were referring to?”

 

Frankie shook her head again, feeling even more disoriented than before. “I’m not- that doesn’t make any sense. No one’s ever called me a king.” She reached up to touch the cuts on her forehead again, hissing lightly as they stung. “What language do you think I was speaking in?”

 

He hesitated. “I think it would be best if I let my friend explain that. It’s really not my field, and I think my explanations will only confuse you more.”

 

She narrowed her eyes. “Who’s your friend?”

 

“Another priest,” he said, “who specializes in . . . cases like yours’. I called him last night when you came in, and he should be here in-” He checked his watch. “-two hours, at most. You’re welcome to stay here until then, if you like- we haven’t got much in the way of food, but there is a diner across the street. I believe they’re still serving breakfast.”

 

Frankie considered this, watching Father Derning out of the corner of her eye. On the one hand, she didn’t know this guy, didn’t know his friend, and didn’t know what they wanted to do with her- if anything. For all she knew, they thought she was possessed by a demon and were planning to bust out an _Exorcist_ reenactment on her. She really didn’t want to end up tied to a bed while someone threw water and shouted that the power of Christ compelled her, and for all she knew, the unnamed “friend” was on his way with ropes and gags in the trunk of his car. On the other, what other options did she have? The hospital couldn’t, or wouldn’t help her; if she went back, they’d just accuse her of hurting herself again. Donna and Patty couldn’t help. Her mother was a continent away. She didn’t have anyone else. And Father Derning had said “cases like yours’” as if it was something he recognized, something he knew how to deal with. The phrasing made her bristle- she wasn’t a case, like a lab rat being poked with needles- but at the same time, it was _true_. And if these guys really did know what was wrong with her, maybe she had a shot of getting over it and having her life back.

 

“What do they have at the diner?” she said.

 

* * *

 

What they had at the diner, it turned out, were bacon, eggs, and pancakes, and they were happy to stuff her with everything on the menu. Frankie, who hadn’t eaten since three o’clock the previous afternoon, ate all of it. When she was done, she scraped her chair back, tipped the waitress generously, and walked down the street, hands in her pockets. Now that her stomach wasn’t growling,she could feel it tightening into knots as she approached the church doors. It had been an hour- probably Father Derning’s “friend” was there by now, and she had no idea what to expect. What kind of “specializing” did this priest do? What kind of priest had specializations, anyway? Did he travel around looking for _cases_ (God, she hated that word) or spend his time at a church like a normal priest? Most importantly, what did he think was wrong with her?

 

When she pushed the church door open, it had emptied out almost entirely. There were only two people inside- Father Derning, and another man who was standing at the altar talking to him in a low voice. That must be the other priest. Frankie swallowed hard, clenched her fist inside her jacket pocket, and approached. “Hi, Father?”

 

He turned to look at her, and Frankie tilted her head, appraising. He was younger than she’d expected- stupid, probably, but she’d always pictured priests on the whole as grandfatherly old guys. This one couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, _maybe_ fourty if she pushed it. His hair was dark and only faintly dusted with grey, his eyes were dark as well, and piercing, and his face was the kind her mom would have called “strong-” handsome by some definitions, only striking by others. Frankie’s opinion was the former.

 

Her first thought was wait, _this guy_ _’s the expert_? Her second was _oh wow, he_ _’s really hot_ , followed by _if I believed in God, I_ _’d be in so much trouble right now_.

 

“Miss Paige,” he said politely, extending a hand. She accepted it, still looking him over. “You can call me Frankie if you want. The only people who ever called me Miss were my high school teachers.”

 

He smiled a bit at that, and _fuck_ , this was not the kind of complication she’d been expecting. “Duly noted. You can call me Andrew, if you like.”

 

She resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot. “It suits you better than ‘father’.” He raised his eyebrows slightly, and she felt herself turning red. “I mean, no offence, but you look more like a guy I could date-” _Shit_. “I mean-”

 

“It’s all right,’ he said, a smile still hovering around his mouth. “You just made my day, actually.”

 

Behind him. Father Derning coughed, and Frankie wondered if he wasn’t starting to regret bringing her in. “I think it would be best if Miss Paige- Frankie- explained the situation herself. You can use my office, if you’d like.”

 

Andrew nodded. “If it’s all right with you?”

 

“Sure,” Frankie said, and followed Father Derning back to the room where she’d spent the night. The cot she’d slept on had vanished, and was replaced with a swivel chair, which she sat down in. Andrew pulled up another one and sat across from her. She was glad neither of them was sitting behind the desk- just being in the office made her think of getting called in to see the principal.

 

Andrew took a notepad out of his pocket and balanced it on his knee. “How much as Father Derning told you about what it is that I do?”

 

“Nothing,” she admitted. “He just said that you looked at “cases” like mine and that you could explain it better than he could.” He was writing something on the notepad, but she couldn’t read it from where she was sitting. “So, what is it that you do?”

 

He looked up. “I work for the Vatican. Well- most priests do, but the division I belong to isn’t technically the ministry. It’s called the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, and our role is to investigate reported miracles.”

 

“Miracles.” she repeated. “Father Derning did tell you what’s happening to me, right?”

 

He stopped writing for a moment. “He said you were manifesting sudden wounds on your wrists and forehead that you couldn’t explain. Is that right?”

 

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it is. But I wouldn’t call that a miracle.”

 

He perked up, like he’d been waiting to offer an explanation. “Miracles as they’re currently defined in the public discourse actually bears very little resemblance to the true definition of the word. When most people hear the word, they assume it carried positive connotations- like a terminal illness being suddenly cured, or a lost item being returned. In the eyes of the Church, a miracle is simply something that cannot be explained, and most likely stems from an act of God.”

 

Frankie raised her eyebrows. “And God is slicing me up because . . .”

 

He set the notepad aside and leaned forward, eyes alight with what looked like curiosity. “Frankie, are you familiar at all with the concept of stigmata?”

 

She shook her head. “Never heard of it.”

 

“Ah.” He sat back in his chair slightly and scratched something on the notepad. “In the Church- well in several branches of Christianity, but originating with the Catholic Church- a stigmatic is one who exhibits on their body the wounds Christ received at the time of his death. The symptoms you’ve shown so far- the wrists and the forehead?” She nodded. “The wrist wounds correspond to the nails used to hold him to the cross, and the forehead wounds were made when a crown of thorns was placed on Jesus’ head. That would fit in with your existing symptoms, wouldn’t it?”

 

Frankie nodded slowly, thinking back to the crucifix hanging in the church. Blood on her forehead and blood on her wrists; it matched the painting on the crucifix. Why was the church so obsessed with blood, anyway? Why couldn’t she have fallen into a church that was obsessed with cake or something?

 

A thought occurred to her, and she scooted over chair over to Father Derning’s desk. Andrew raised his eyebrows, but she ignored him, pulling the chair back into place. “You said stigmatics had the same wounds as Jesus, right?”

 

“That’s right.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “There are five wounds in total, though the most common one exhibited is injury to the hands. You’ve already experienced those, obviously.”

 

“No I haven’t,” she said triumphantly, thrusting the crucifix at him. “Jesus had nails in his palms, not his wrists. And look at my wrists-” She held an arm out towards him. “I’ve got holes there, but not in my palms. So I haven’t got stigmata.”

 

Andrew set the notebook aside and bent over her arm. “May I?”

 

She nodded.

 

He lifted the bandage on the underside of her wrist, examining the wound closely. Frankie held out her other arm, this one palm-down, and raised her eyebrows at him. He looked up from her other wrist, then did a double-take. He gently put her wrist down and examined the other, lifting the bandage to check on the injury.

 

“It’s the same on both wrists,” she said as he let go of her arm and sat back in his chair. “So, what do you say? Am I stigmatic?”

 

“Well,” he said, retrieving his notepad, “your injuries are definitely idiosyncratic-”

 

“Sorry, English?”

 

“Unusual,” he clarified. “It’s true, most stigmatics manifest injuries in the palms of their hands, not their wrists- they mirror what they see in popular depictions of Christ. But scholars have discovered that Jesus’s wounds were more likely received through his wrists, not his hands. The weight of his body would have torn through the nails. Are you familiar at all with Christian iconography?”

 

Frankie shook her head. “I don’t even go to church.”

 

He frowned. “But you are Christian? Catholic?”

 

She shook her head again. “I’m an atheist.” Caustically, she wondered if God was going to strike her down on the spot just for mouthing off in his house. “So why do people like me get stigmata? Is it because we pissed off someone upstairs?”

 

Andrew took his glasses off and rubbed a hand over his mouth, forehead creasing. “I’m not sure if I can help you.”

 

It was unfair of her, but the first thing she felt was a flare of hot anger. “Because it’s not stigmata?”

 

“Because I honestly don’t know,” She raised her eyebrows and he explained, “Almost all stigmatics- certainly the cases I’m familiar with- manifest the wounds out of a deep love for Christ and His sufferings. They feel His pain so deeply that it becomes a part of their body. For an atheist to receive the wounds- it’s unheard-of.”

 

“Right,” she said, clenching her hands in her lap. “So is there some kind of Society For Stigmatic Atheists I can call to help me out? Because the other godless heathens I talked to weren’t much help.”

 

“Frankie-”

 

“No,” she interrupted, picking up steam. She was thinking of Rebecca, with her huge sad eyes, and Father Derning’s insistence that he couldn’t do anything for her. “What is it with you guys? You’re supposed to be all about helping people and God’s love, but you don’t actually do _shit_. And what about this, huh?” She brandished her wrist at him. “Is this what you call God? Putting fucking _holes_ in people?” She stood up and grabbed her jacket, brushing against Andrew’s chair on the way to the door. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

 

“ _Frankie_.”

 

She paused at the door, and took a deep breath through her nose, smelling incense smoke and wood. She didn’t turn around, but she could feel Andrew’s eyes on her back as her anger leached away. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fucking _fair_ , and it made her want to scream and cry and flail the way she hadn’t since she was a little kid raging against something she couldn’t possible move. This was why didn’t believe in God in the first place, because she wasn’t interested in answering to anyone, and now she had to anyway, and it made her feel goddamned _sick_.

 

But that wasn’t technically his fault either.

 

“I’d like to help you,” he said.

 

“But you can’t,” she replied softly, still facing the door.

 

“No,” The chair creaked, and she wondered if he was getting up, but there were no footsteps- he’d just shifted. “The Church can’t- not officially, anyway. You aren’t a member, so you aren’t within our jurisdiction.”

 

He paused. “But?” Frankie said.

 

“But,” he repeated, “that doesn’t mean I can’t help you on an individual basis. I’ve studied other people who’ve manifested stigmata. I’m familiar with the way it functions. And I have friends within and without the Church who know the way stigmata functions. _We_ can help you. The Church can’t.”

 

Frankie paused for a long moment before taking her hand away from the doorknob and turning around to face Andrew. He was still sitting in his chair, face studiously blank. “I’m not-” She stuffed her fists in her pockets. “I can’t pay you. And if you’re working outside the Church, they won’t either. You’ll lose your- salary, or whatever it is they give you.”

 

He hesitated. “That is true, yes.”

 

“Can I suggest something?” Without waiting for an answer, Frankie leaned against the back of her chair, propping her elbows against it. “Your boss or whoever sent you here, right? And they don’t know any of the stuff I’ve told you.”

 

He frowned, forehead creasing. “Yes, that’s right. But I’m not sure what you’re-”

 

“Let me finish,” she said, holding up a hand. “They sent you over to investigate because they figured there was an actual stigmatic running around instead of an atheist who’s just bleeding for no reason. So if you called them back and told them that there was actually something to investigate, they’d believe you, right?” She swallowed as she finished, watching him carefully. She didn’t see anything wrong with the plan, but given that this guy was a priest and she was basically telling him to lie to his boss (and his boss was . . . basically God) she could easily see him taking offense and leaving. Then again, if he did, she’d basically be in the same situation she was before he’d showed up.

 

A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips, and Frankie relaxed, letting her shoulders drop. “You’re right, they wouldn’t.”

 

“Exactly!” she said. “So you could tell them you had to stay and investigate- if you wanted to- and they’d let you stay here without cutting you off.” She held a hand out. “Shake on it?”

 

He stood out of the chair and caught her hand in his. “Gladly.”


	5. Chapter 5

After the meeting at the church, Frankie went home by herself. Nothing personal, she explained to Andrew- she just hadn’t been back in her own apartment for a full day, and she needed time to unwind before she could do anything else. He offered to drive her back- apparently he owned, or rented a car, which was pretty impressive for Pittsburgh- but she turned him down. She was comfier on the bus, she explained with a smile, though she did give him directions to her place for when he did come over. It was only a few blocks away from the church, after all.

 

She didn’t go straight home, which was another reason she’d opted for the bus instead of getting a ride. She rode over to the library instead, ignoring the stares of the other passengers, and headed in to load up on books about Jesus and the crucification. She was sure Andrew would have answered her questions, but she didn’t want to _have_ questions, and it seemed kind of insulting to say as much to his face. Like, “I’m really glad you decided to help me and all, but I’m not sure how much you actually know, so I’m going to go check out what other people have to say just so I can confirm that you know your shit.” _She_ _’d_ be offended, and she wasn’t even God’s Chosen Tragically Virginal Servant.

 

Okay, probably there was a better way of putting it. But she was too worn out to think of one. So she hopped a bus over to the library, headed to the religion section (after asking a librarian for directions- she’d never been there before) and walked out with an armful of books with titles like “Virtuous Magic” and “They Bore the Wounds of Christ.” The books earned her more strange looks on the ride home, but she tucked the books under her arm and ignored them. They didn’t know shit.

 

As soon as she got home, she dumped the books on the armchair in the main room and headed for the bedroom to shuck off her bloody clothes. The phone was sitting next to her bed, and the red answering machine light was blinking. Frankie hit the button with her thumb, then turned around to rummage for towels.

 

“Frankie?” It was Donna’s voice. Frankie scrubbed a hand through her hair with a sigh. She hadn’t forgotten the conversation with Patty, though the everything else that had happened had pushed it out of her mind, and now she had to start thinking about it again.

 

“How are you feeling?” the message continued. Donna’s voice sounded tinny on the machine, and it echoed against the ceiling. “I had to leave around midnight, but Patty got home an hour ago and she said you woke up. Call me when you get this, okay? I just want to make sure you’re feeling better.” _Click_.

 

Frankie slumped heavily against the bed, feeling suddenly too tired to stand up. Donna was over at Patty’s place, so if she called, Patty would probably either overhear the conversation or pick up the phone. On the other hand, Patty had also probably been there when Donna called, so it wasn’t like she wouldn’t be expecting this. On the _other_ other hand, if they’d argued over this- and knowing the two of them, they probably had- calling now would just make everything worse, which she definitely didn’t want to do. She stared at the phone in her hand, turning her options over in her head. _Fuck_ , she was too wiped out for this.

 

In the end, she hit redial and leaned back against the bed as the phone rang. Maybe she’d get lucky and nobody would be home, so she could avoid the whole conversation.

 

 _Click_. “Frankie?”

 

Dammit. “Yeah,” Frankie said, rubbing her wrist. “It’s me. I got your message.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.” Her forehead was itching again. “I got home a few minutes ago.”

 

There was a relieved sigh from the other end of the phone. “Patty said you’d woken up by the time she left, but she didn’t know if you were planning on going to the hospital. Did you?”

 

Frankie laughed hollowly. “Are you kidding? They’d just try to commit me.” She stretched her free arm out in front of her, examining her wrist. The wound still looked raw. Felt raw, too. “I came straight home from the church.”

 

“Frankie-” Donna paused. “Are you sure about not getting checked out? I mean, last night- you looked pretty bad.”

 

Frankie’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I told you, they wouldn’t believe me.” There was a long pause. Frankie felt her stomach drop. “ _You_ believe me, right?”

 

“Of course I do!” Donna said, a little too quickly. “It’s just- fuck, Frankie, you were bleeding all over the place and talking in some weird language nobody understood. You know what the nuns used to call that? Speaking in tongues. It was like something out of the Exorcist or some shit.”

 

Frankie laughed hoarsely. “Well then I guess you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve got a priest working me over now.”

 

There was a clattering noise, like Donna had knocking something over. “Shit, seriously? You mean that guy who picked you up at the Jackpot?”

 

Frankie shook her head, then realized Donna couldn’t see her. “No, some friend of his. He says he’s from something called the Congregation of the Saints, I don’t know-”

 

“Congregation of the Causes of the Saints,” Donna corrected her. “We covered it in school.”

 

“Seriously?” Frankie brought her knees up to her chest, tucking them under her chin. “So you can confirm that they’re not just perverts out for my nubile bleeding flesh, right?”

 

Donna laughed. “They’re part of the Vatican, Frankie.”

 

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

 

Donna made a muffled snorting noise, like she was trying not to laugh again. “They’re the branch that checks up on people who say they found Jesus on a piece of toast or whatever. If they think you’re legit enough, they fill out the paperwork to have you declared a saint.”

 

“A _what_?”

 

“Only if someone’s nominated you,” Donna said quickly. “Most of what they do is miracle investigations, and-” She paused. “What about you is he investigating, exactly?”

 

“That’s what _I_ asked him,” Frankie said. “Apparently I have stigmata. Or something.”

 

“Oh.” Frankie couldn’t tell from her voice how she was reacting, but anything less than incredulous laughter was worrying. Or comforting. It meant Andrew and Father Derning weren’t actually full of shit.

 

“Have you ever heard of it?” Frankie said, curious. She’d never heard of it, but then she’d never been to Catholic school.

 

“Yeah,” Donna said. “Yeah, it-” There was a jingling noise in the background, and then the sound of a door opening and closing, and a muffled voice. “Hey, who’s on the phone?”

 

“I should go,” Frankie said quickly.

 

“No, it’s fine- it’s Frankie,” Donna’s voice was muffled, so Frankie assumed she’d put a hand over the speaker. She could still hear her, though. “You want to say hi?”

 

There was another clattering noise, and then Patty must have picked up the phone, because she said “hey, how’re you doing?”

 

“Fine,” Frankie said, shifting uncomfortably. “Look, I know you said not to call and everything, but Donna left a message and I didn’t-”

 

“It’s fine,” Patty said quickly. “It’s all fine. Look, just- forget what I said earlier, okay? It doesn’t matter.”

 

“What did you say?” Donna said in the distance. Patty said something Frankie didn’t catch.

 

“I’ve gotta get off the phone anyway,” Frankie said. “I need to shower. I’ll call you guys back tomorrow, okay?”

 

“Yeah!” Patty said, sounding relieved. “We’ll talk to you then. Feel better soon.”

 

“Thanks. Bye.” Frankie set the receiver down and tilted her head back against the bed, closing her eyes. That had, all things considered, gone better than expected. Okay, Patty and Donna would probably have it out over Patty telling her to stay away, but there wasn’t much she could do about that; relationship counseling wasn’t in her job description. She’d done all she could, now.

 

Her back and shoulders ached, and she felt sluggish and heavy, but she still badly needed a shower, so she heaved herself up off the floor and went to work shedding last night’s clothes. Probably she shouldn’t put those down the laundry chute either without a good soaking, but she’d deal with that later; besides, if they were stained, they were probably already stained for good. She shrugged her shirt off and stretched her arms over her head, wincing at the sounds of her muscles creaking. Wasn’t twenty-two too young to be getting stiff from sleeping on a cot overnight? Maybe she should ask Andrew whether or not stigmata also caused premature aging.

 

Grabbing a towel from beside the bed, she walked through the bedroom door to the bathroom. Her shower door was still hanging half-open from the day before yesterday, and the faucet was dripping, like it had been for months. She dropped the towel on the floor and hopped in, not bothering to wait for the water to get hot. She just needed to feel _clean_.

 

Water streamed down her face and pooled on the shower floor in reddish-pink puddles. She probably looked terrifying with blood dripping all over her face, but she didn’t care. She tilted her head back into the stream, letting out a long sigh as the water massaged the tension out of her shoulders and back. Maybe things weren’t so bad. She had someone on her side now who seemed to know what he was doing, and she’d more or less made up with Patty. Everything could still work out. She just had to calm down a bit and focus on finding a solution. Everything would be _fine_.

 

The first lash caught her so off-guard that she fell, hitting one knee on the tap and slamming her forehead into the shower wall. She screamed, more out of shock than pain, but as she tried to get back to her feet, she was felled by another lash. She gasped, shaking water out of her eyes, looking around frantically for whoever was holding the whip. It couldn’t be happening, not now, not _again_ . . .

 

“Three!”

 

Another lash, and she screamed in pain this time. She grabbed for the wall, the spout, anything that she could use to hold herself upright, but the blows came again and again and drove her back to her knees.

 

“Seven!”

 

The bathroom tiles in front of her were wavering like a broken TV screen. She could see the tiles, but through them- or on them- or somewhere in front of them- was the wavering heat of a Jerusalem morning and a mass of accusing faces and pointing fingers. With each blow, they screamed, and their screams seemed to push the whip down harder; it stung more with every strike.

 

“Twelve!”

 

Her hands were bound- no they weren’t, she could see them in front of her- and her robe was ripped- but it _couldn_ _’t_ be, she wasn’t wearing one. She struggled to her knees, and then to her feet, bracing both hands against the wall, groping for a way out. She had to call for help- Donna, Andrew, Father Derning, someone who could make the blows stop coming.

 

“Twenty-three!”

 

She half-stumbled, half-fell out of the shower and onto her hands and knees on the floor. The lashes were still coming, and there was blood in her eyes and on her hands and on the floor and she couldn’t see. She crawled blindly towards what she thought was the door, fumbling for the towel she’d dropped so that she could wipe the blood out of her eyes and see where she was going. She couldn’t find it, and the pain was paralyzing, and the crowd was screaming and she was all alone.

 

“Thirty!”

 

The next lash knocked her down, and she couldn’t find the strength to pull herself back up. She pulled her hands up to cover her face, feeling blood trickle through her fingers and down her wrists. Her wrists ached and the cuts on her forehead stung, and the whip was tearing into her skin and ripping her down to the spine. She curled up in a ball and screwed her eyes shut, waiting for it to be over.

 

“Thirty-nine!”

 

The noise of the crowd faded away, and she was suddenly aware of her harsh panting and the patter of water against the tiles. She pulled her hands away from her face and waited, but there were no further blows. It was over- for now, at least. Her wounds still stung like someone had poured vinegar on them, but she could sit up and grope for a towel without her whole body screaming in protest. She finally managed to find it, and wiped her face off before pulling herself up by the edge of the sink and staring at herself in the mirror.

 

She looked like hell. The open cuts on her forehead were red and raw, and so were the holes in her wrists. She twisted around to see her back, then immediately regretted it when she caught sight of the open gashes in the mirror. There was blood everywhere- running down her face, across her back, down her legs, and dripping from her arms. The whole bathroom looked like a crime scene. She couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t. What the hell had just happened?

 

She needed to call Andrew. She would have called Donna, normally, but there was nothing Donna could do about this besides maybe helping with cleanup, and she needed way more than a clean bathroom at this point. She needed someone to tell her what was happening to her, and maybe lie through their teeth and tell her it was going to be okay. She wasn’t sure how well Andrew would fare on the second, but she was pretty sure he could work on the first.

 

He’d given her the number she could reach him at, and she’d left the slip of paper in her jeans pocket. She limped out to the bedroom, hissing in pain at every step as the cuts throbbed, and had to crouch down to fish it out of her pocket. When she tried to bend over, she let out a scream as fire licked down her back. Paper in hand, she sank down onto the bed and punched in the number, listening numbly as it rang.

 

There was clicking noise, and then the rush of air from the other end of the phone. “Hello?”

 

“Hi,” Frankie clenched a fist in her lap. “Is this Andrew Kiernan?”

 

“Yes, may I ask who’s speaking?”

 

“It’s Frankie Paige,” she said. “You spoke to me at the church this morning?”

 

“Ah!” He sounded pleased. “I actually just finished speaking with a contact at the Vatican, about his dossier of stigmatic occurrences. Did you have a question about your case?”

 

“I need your help,” she said in a rush. “It happened again, and I-” She swallowed hard, trying to keep a wobble out of her voice. “I think it’s getting worse.”

 

There was a pause. “I’ll be right there.”

 

* * *

 

She managed to get on a pair of jeans before he arrived, but every attempt she made at putting on a shirt of a bra led to pain ripping through her back, so she ended up just holding a towel up to her chest and hoping for the best. Her hair was still wet, but she made an attempt at dragging a comb through it- clumsily, one-handed, but she got rid of the worst of the tangles. She was eyeing the blow dryer wondering it it was worth making the attempt when the buzzer went off.

 

When she opened the door, he was dressed in the same overcoat and sweater he’d been wearing at the church, but the scarf around his neck was dangling crookedly, like he’d thrown it on without checking in a mirror. His hair was all over the place, too, and she wondered if he’d been lying on the phone and she’d woken him up from a midday nap.

 

He had an armful of papers, and he was shuffling through them when she opened the door. “I brought some of my research with me, but I’m not-” He looked up at her and stopped mid-sentence as he took in the towel. “Ah . . .”

 

Silently, she turned around, feeling, unaccountably, more naked that she would have showing up with no clothes on at all. She heard a sharp intake of breath, and felt a slight rush of air against the cuts, like he’d reached out to touch them and pulled back at the last minute. “That’s- oh.”

 

She turned back around, hitching the towel up. He looked a bit green. That couldn’t mean anything good. “Have you ever seen wounds like this before?”

 

“I, ah,” He cleared his throat, still looking queasy. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never actually examined a stigmatic before. That is, I’ve studied the extant cases, and I met with one once, but I didn’t- that is, I never-”

 

“You never saw the injuries before,” she finished, and he nodded. “Well today’s your lucky day, I guess.”

 

He laughed faintly. “I suppose you could call it that.”

 

She gestured for him to follow her, and turned and walked into the kitchen with him trailing after. “When did this happen?”

 

“About half an hour ago,” she said, lowering herself into a chair at the kitchen table. “I was showering, and all of a sudden it just- it was like someone was whipping me. I don’t know.”

 

He sat down next to her. “May I take a closer look?”

 

She shrugged and dragged the chair around so that her back was to him. He made a soft noise of assent and reached for her back, hesitating at the last minute.

 

“You can touch them,” she said over her shoulder. He nodded like he’d been trying to think of a way to ask and gently prodded one of the gashes with his finger. Frankie dug her teeth into her bottom lip, exhaling slowly through her nose in an attempt not to yelp out loud. _Fuck_ , that hurt. He was being gentle and all, but every touch felt like someone jabbing a hot needle into the cut.

 

“You said it was like someone was whipping you,” he said, still examining the cuts intently. “Could you describe that any further?”

 

“It was like the last two times.” She took a deep breath. This all sounded crazy, even to her, but if anyone was going to believe her was the guy whose job it was to study bleeding statues. “I was in the shower, and I felt the first cut, and I heard- I think it was a crowd. I could see them too, but it was like I had double vision or I was looking through a projector, because I could see the wall as well. And there was this guy shouting numbers- I think he was counting the number of times I was supposed to be whipped.”

 

Andrew paused behind her. “Do you remember how many times?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, shuddering slightly. She could still hear the voice in her ears. “It was thirty-nine.” She pulled her chair around to face him. “Does that mean something?”

 

He nodded, forehead creasing. “Thirty-nine is the number of times Jesus was whipped before being crucified.” His frown deepened. “I know I asked you this already, but are you quite positive that you have no familiarity with the Gospels at all? Even childhood teachings you might have consciously forgotten?”

 

“No,” she said, scowling. “I don’t. I never went to Catholic school, or Sunday school, or whatever school that would tell me how Jesus died. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that, when I started getting used as a holy holepunch.”

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, gently putting a hand to her back. She shivered. She was still bleeding and gross and probably puss-y at this point, but his hand was warm, and it was cold in her apartment. Her back and shoulders were covered in goosebumps. She leaned back against the touch, letting a tiny sigh past her lips. He froze, and she hunched forward again. “Sorry,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “It’s really cold in here.”

 

He nodded and got up from the chair. His face and ears were a faint pinkish colour, eyes lowered modestly, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was blushing. “Those wounds should be cleaned before you bandage them. Do you have any rubbing alcohol?”

 

“Under the kitchen sink,” she said, and he knelt down in front of the cupboard to rummage around inside. She wrapped both arms around herself, suddenly missing his presence next to her. Not because she was going to faint or something without him holding her up- fuck no- but he was warm, and she was cold, and it was just reassuring to have someone who presumably knew what they were doing taking care of her instead of just making wild stabs at what might be wrong. So she liked feeling taken care of. Fucking sue her.

 

Andrew returned to the kitchen table, a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand and a dishrag in the other. “Is this clean? I couldn’t find anything else to apply it with.”

 

“Yeah,” Frankie said with a small laugh. “I guess it’s a good thing that I remember to wash my dishes.”

 

He smiled, and sat down across from her. “I’m going to need you to turn around again.” He paused. “It’s probably going to hurt.”

 

She turned the chair around. “Yeah, because pain’s a foreign concept to me at this point.”

 

He laughed and wet the dishcloth with the bottle and set it down. “Ready?”

 

“As I’ll ever be.”

 

It turned out that “as I’ll ever be” didn’t quite cover it, because at the first touch of the dishcloth to her back, she shrieked out loud and he dropped the cloth in surprise.

 

“Sorry,” she said, breathing hard. “Sorry, I was just- surprised. I can take it.”

 

He hesitated. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if you went to the hospital? They could provide you with painkillers.”

 

She shook her head. “I don’t have insurance. And as soon as I walked in, it would be all you-did-this-to-yourself this and let-me-get-you-a-shrink that, and I just- I don’t want to deal with it.” She took a deep breath. “You can keep going. I’m ready.”

 

The next touch make her wince and suck her breath in sharply, but she wrapped her hands around the back of the chair and gritted her teeth. It didn’t really get easier, but he was as gentle as he could be and filled up the space with chatter about his work in a chemistry lab before he'd joined the priesthood, and then the Bible and and Jesus wandering in the desert. None of it made much sense to her, but she tuned out and listened to his voice instead of concentrating on her back, and it sort of helped. When he was done, she got up out of the chair and went into the bedroom to put a shirt on while Andrew politely averted his eyes.

 

When she came back out, buttoning up her shirt, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a book open in front of him. “Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “I’ve got water and pop. And beer, but I don’t know if you guys are allowed to drink beer.”

 

He looked up and smiled. “A beer sounds, nice. Actually, monks are credited with inventing alcohol in the first place, did you know that?”

 

“ _Everyone_ knows that,” she said, plucking two bottles from the fridge and setting them down in the table. His face twitched like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “What are you reading?”

 

He held the book up for her examination. It was one of her library books, _The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi_. “I saw that you had a copy,” he said, setting it down. “But I bring this with me whenever I come on cases.” He flushed. “I’ve read it a few times.”

 

“Mmm,” Frankie said, sitting down and taking a swig from the beer. “So what does it say?”

 

His face lit up, like it had back in the church when she’d asked about miracles. “It’s a collection of essays about the stigmata phenomena and how the narrative is constructed, culturally speaking. There are some who argue that those who exhibit stigmata do so out of a psychosomatic sympathy with Jesus and His suffering. Others claim that they’re a hoax, much like the display of relics during the medieval period- that the fact that most stigmatics receives only two wounds at the most reveals a reluctance on their part to harm themselves further for the sake of trickery. Of course, neither applies to you, because you don’t have the familiarity with the stigmatic wounds necessary to experience them psychically or fake them.” He wrinkled his nose. “And having examined your wounds, I doubt you would go to those lengths even if you did want to perpetuate a hoax.”

 

She laughed. “You never know. I hear miracles sell well these days. Just ask Sylvia Browne.”

 

He frowned. “Who?”

 

“Nevermind.” She set the beer down, considering her next question carefully. “Are you . . . happy to have found proof?”

 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“I mean,” She paused, considering. “Not that you’re happy I’m in pain or anything, but finding someone whose wounds can’t be explained- it’s a big deal for you, right? For your church?”

 

He tilted his head, considering. “Yes and no.” He set his beer bottle down. “Ideally, yes, someone manifesting woulds like yours’ would be cause for celebration- proof of Christ’s power on earth. But there’s a lot of paperwork involved. Like most things, really.”

 

She grinned. “Like most things.”

 

He nodded. “Stigmatics are often qualified for sainthood, and some are canonized- Francis of Assisi was, and so was Padre Pio.” Frankie frowned, and he waved a hand. “Another stigmatic. But canonization is a long process, and there’s a lot of consideration involved, political as well as spiritual. It needs to reflect well on the Church.”

 

Frankie nodded slowly. “And I’m an atheist.”

 

“And you’re an atheist,” he agreed. “It’s unheard-of, and I honestly don’t know how the Church would deal with the situation. Possibly they’d seek out an exemption. More likely they would leave the case alone. People who are canonized- well for one thing, it’s incredibly rare, and for another, saints are sort of poster children for Christianity. People whose devotion serves as an example. You aren’t that person.”

 

She took a swig of beer. “Damn right I’m not.”

 

He laughed a little, and she laughed too. It felt nice, making jokes like a normal person, only the jokes were about what a shitty saint she’d made instead of grumpy customers or some goofy news story. If this was her life now, she might as well have a sense of humour about it.

 

They sat in comfortable silence for a bit, Andrew turning the pages of his book, then he asked “May I ask why?”

 

She looked up. “Why what?”

 

“Why you’re not a church member.” She frowned, and he held up a hand. “You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. I’m just curious.”

 

She took a long pull from her beer bottle, considering. “Honestly?” He nodded. “I don’t know.”

 

His face fell a bit. “At all?”

 

“Well-” She shrugged. “I didn’t go to church at a kid, so it wasn’t like I was indoctrinated or anything. I have friends who did, but they’re not really religious either. And I never got into it. That’s all.” She set the bottle down and stood up. “So what needs to happen next? Research?”

 

He nodded, holding the book up. “I haven’t been able to find anything on the healing of stigmatics, but I haven’t read some of those books you have out in the hallway, and they might have something.”

 

She nodded. “I’ll get the books.”

 

* * *

 

 

They spent the next few hours reading, occasionally commenting on something they found or scribbling a note down- he’d brought his notepad with him, because of _course_ he had- but mostly just leafing through the books. It was an oddly companionable experience, Frankie thought- it wasn’t that she didn’t read, but reading wasn’t usually associated with hanging out. When she was with Donna and Patty, they usually went out dancing or drinking; they didn’t stay at home. But it was nice. In a weird sort of way.

 

“It says here that most stigmatics are women,” she observed, scanning _The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism_. “Does anyone know why?”

 

Andrew shook his head. “There are feminist Christian scholars who suggest that women are closer to Christ in spirit because of Mary Magdalene’s devotion in his final hours, but that isn’t a position recognized by the Church.”

 

“Gee,” Frankie said, “I wonder why.”

 

He laughed a little, then glanced at the clock and stood up. “I should go.”

 

She followed his gaze. It was nearly seven o’clock, holy _shit_. How had that much time passed. “Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? I make a wicked reheated pasta.”

 

He smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I left messages with my contacts at the Vatican, and they might have called back while I was away. Besides, I told Father Derning I’d be back at the motel tonight if he wanted to reach me.” He paused, as if something had occurred to him. “Do you have anyone you can call to stay with you? Friends, relatives?”

 

She nodded. “My mom’s out of town, but I have friends who live nearby. I’ll call them if I don’t feel good.”

 

He paused, worrying at his scarf with both hands. “But you might have another attack while you’re here on your own.”

 

Frankie gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, but he had a point. “I’m not going to keel over as soon as you walk out the door,” she said, but she picked the phone up off the counter. “I’ll call them. See? I’m holding the phone and everything.”

 

He smiled. “Good to know.” He finished wrapping his scarf around his neck and walked over to the door. She got up and followed him, figuring that it was probably good manners to walk your helpful stigmata know-how (still depressingly celibate) buddy to the door. “Should I come back tomorrow?”

 

Frankie leaned against the doorframe, chewing thoughtfully on her thumbnail. “I’m not sure. I mean, if there’s something you need to be doing here, then yeah. But what else can you do?”

 

He considered. “In a physical sense-” She felt her face go pink and fervently hoped he hadn’t noticed- “-not much, it’s true. Your injuries should be monitored, but I’m no more qualified to do that than your friends. I should continue my research, of course, but I’m not sure how much more information we can gather. Hopefully one of my contacts will have something to show me.”

 

Frankie blew a piece of hair out of her face. “So basically we have to just wait until something happens?”

 

He nodded. “That’s about the shape of it.”

 

She sighed. “I’m not great at sitting around doing nothing.”

 

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice.” He opened the door and fixed her with a look. “You will call your friends, right?”

 

She held the phone up. “Count on it.”

 

He nodded, satisfied, and walked out. Frankie shut the door and crossed over to the kitchen, grabbing a packet of ramen noodles from the cupboard and tossing them in the microwave. She sank back down into the kitchen chair and set the phone down on the table, staring it like it contained all the secrets of the universe. Yeah, she’d promised Donna _and_ Andrew that she’d call, so not calling was like a two-for-one broken promise asshole move. But she really, really didn’t want a babysitter. The day had gone way better than she’d expected- well, after the psychic ass-kicking- and she didn’t feel burned-out like she had before, but she preferred not having to keep her friends on call because she might flip out and go Jesus any minute. Basically, she just wanted shit to go back to normal, but she didn’t think she’d be getting that any time soon.

 

She picked up the phone and dialed. It rang twice before Donna picked up. “Hey, what’s up?”

 

“It’s me,” Frankie said, licking her lips. “Uh, this is gonna sound weird, but do you and Patty want to camp out at my place tonight? I can explain when you get over.”

 

Donna didn’t even pause. “We’ll be there in ten.”

 

* * *

 

Alameida had been confused when he first woke. Had he ascended to Heaven? Had God taken pity on him after all? He was in darkness, and no longer in pain, but he could see and feel nothing; surely if he was in Heaven or Hell, there would be some sign. Purgatory, then; he had sinned, but not so terribly that he was cast out of God’s light forever. He could yet hope for salvation.

 

But then the woman opened her eyes, and everything was lost.

 

He couldn’t- didn’t- understand what had happened, how he could see through this woman’s eyes and hear through her ears, but he soon came to realize that he didn’t care. He only wanted to free himself of this fleshy prison, to somehow tear himself out of her and fling himself to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory or somewhere where his body was his own. The more he saw from this woman’s eyes, the more he felt a seething rage build in him until he felt that he would fly into pieces. Why had he been forced to stay with her? He hated this woman; hated her gaze, hated her laughter, hated every blasphemous, filthy thought that flowed through her mind and into his. For what purpose had he been sent here? To watch her fornicate and rage and take the Lord in vain? He could not believe it- he did not want to believe it- when he saw the stigmata appear on her body. This woman, bearing the wounds of Christ? He had bled in Jesus’ name for years on end, but he had lived in the sight of the Lord. Why would someone like her be visited with the stigmata? It was an _insult_.

 

Now, as she slept sprawled against her sofa, he strained to lift one of her arms. He had tried, time and time again, to make her move according to his will, but nothing had come of it; he may have been in her mind, but it seemed that he wasn’t able to manipulate her body. But that had been when she was awake. Now she was sleeping, and intoxicated, and as he concentrated, he saw her hand slowly rise from the pillow. He had done it.

 

Her legs took more effort, but he had nothing to do but focus, and he had been waiting for so long. As he dragged each leg across the floor, her torso flopped like a rag doll’s. He expounded more energy on holding her upright, and she stayed where he held her, though her head and arms were still dangling loosely. One foot went in front of the other, and he managed to drag her from the couch and into the living room doorway. He thought, when she passed her friends, that the noise might wake them, but they were both asleep, leaning on each other, and neither stirred.

 

He couldn’t make her legs move as if she was walking; instead he had to drag them across the floor, and her head and arms still drooped. He dragged her over to the kitchen table, waiting every moment for her to wake up. She didn’t. She must have been more drunk than he had given her credit for. If he had still had a face, his lip would have curled.

 

The kitchen chairs had been left pushed away from the table, and he dropped her into one, letting her chin fall onto her chest. The papers she and the priest- the priest who was helping her sin in God’s name- had been writing on were still strewn across the table, and some were still blank. He focused on her left hand- he had written with his own, when he had been alive- and clenched it around a pencil. It dragged across the table, leaving a streak of grey in its wake, but he managed to maneuver it to the paper, and began to write. The words came out distorted and huge, like a child’s handwriting, but they were there. He took her hand and dragged it across the paper again. If he couldn’t speak, he would pass his message on some other way.


	6. Chapter 6

When Frankie woke up the next morning, everything felt stiff, even the stuff that probably wasn’t supposed to. Her back hurt- no surprise there- as did her wrists and forehead, but for some reason, her fingers felt stiff too. Had Jesus had some kind of Holy Carpal Tunnel Syndrome the books hadn’t mentioned? She doubted it.

 

She could hear Patty and Donna already up and clattering around the kitchen, and smiled to herself. The night before had gone- after the brief awkwardness of not knowing whether or not they’d argued that afternoon (they hadn’t)- really well. They’d raided her cupboard and found a bags of potato chips and camped out on the living room floor (well, they had; Frankie got the couch) and shot the shit until all hours of the night. Then The Crucible had come on TV and Patty had asked her if she’d seen anyone with the devil lately, and they hadn’t been able to have a real pillow fight with Frankie’s wrists all fucked up, but she’d gotten in a few good swings. She wasn’t sure which one of them had fallen asleep first, but both Patty and Donna had been yawning when Frankie had closed her eyes. Now it was- she checked her watch- almost eleven in the morning, and she felt less like a stigmatic being babysat and more like a high schooler recovering from an all-nighter. Which she preferred, though she wasn’t sure if Jesus would have been so keen on saving the world if he’d gone to her high school.

 

She got up, wrapping the couch blanket around her shoulders, and padded into the kitchen. Patty had commandeered the stove, and was waving a spatula at Donna in order to punctuate some kind of point about French toast recipes. One of them had turned on the radio to the classic rock station, but had turned it down in deference to the fact that Frankie had slept in, so a very muted Roger Daltrey was singing about his teenaged wasteland. Donna was perched on the counter, laughing at Patty’s speech. Frankie paused in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, smiling at both of them.

 

Donna was the first one to notice she was there. “Frankie, hey!” She slid off the counter and ran over to hug her. “Did you sleep okay? We didn’t wake you up, did we?”

 

“Yes, and no,” Frankie said, hugging her back. “I just woke up.” She grinned over Donna’s shoulder at Patty, who was staring intently at her frying pan. “What’s for breakfast?”

 

“French toast and bacon,” Patty announced, apparently deciding that the bacon was fried enough and lifting the pan off the over. “And orange juice. A girl’s gotta eat right when she’s Jesus.”

 

Frankie laughed as she settled down at the kitchen table. She’d told Donna and Patty everything Andrew had said the night before, and while Patty was a bit more skeptical than Donna- “so this makes you, like, a saint? Seriously? I’ve seen you commit half the deadly sins myself-” they both agreed that it made a weird amount of sense, which was more than Frankie had settled on. But then, they’d gone to Catholic schools, and she hadn’t.

 

“Hey, Frankie,” Donna said as she sat down across from her. “Are all these yours? Is it okay if I move them?” She was holding up the notes Frankie and Andrew had been taking the day before.

 

Frankie nodded. “Just a little extracurricular reading.”

 

Donna moved to set the papers down on the counter, then stopped, peering at one. “You guys were reading Latin?”

 

“What?” Frankie got up and walked over, grabbing one of the papers from Donna. It didn’t look anything like she notes she had taken. The top half of the page was covered in messy spikes that might be some kind of alphabet, but wasn’t any she could recognize. The bottom half was written in recognizable letters, but she still had no idea what it said. “I didn’t write that.”

 

Donna frowned. “Did he?”

 

“Not that I know of.” Frankie turned the paper over. Her notes on the St. Francis book were still intact on that side. “This is written _over_ my notes.”

 

Patty came around the counter and took the paper from Donna. “You can read this? Seriously?”

 

“Well I can’t read what it says, but I recognize the language-”

 

“Guys!” Frankie’s head was starting to ache again. “Focus. I didn’t write this, and I don’t think Andrew did either.”

 

Donna shook her head slowly. “So who did?”

 

Frankie slumped back into the chair. “I don’t know.” _Could_ she have written it? She didn’t know Latin, but she also didn’t know about stigmata, and she still had holes in her wrists. But Andrew hadn’t said anything about stigmatics suddenly knowing other languages. Then again, she hadn’t asked.

 

“Your hand is moving,” Donna observed.

 

“No it’s not, it’s-” Frankie looked down. Her left hand, lying on the tabletop, was twitching frenetically, like a giant fleshy spider. Her fingers especially were jerking back and forth, almost like they were trying to crawl across the table of their own volition. Frankie slammed her right hand down over her left, and they stopped moving.

 

“Wow,” Patty said. “They must have you on some really freaky drugs, man.”

 

Frankie was shaking. “I haven’t taken any drugs.”

 

Patty and Donna exchanged a look, like the one they had back in the club. “We should call someone,” Donna said.

 

“We should call Andrew,” Frankie said, staring down at the table. There were grooves in it that there hadn’t been before, like someone had dragged a knife across the plastic. “But can we eat first? I’m starving.”

 

Another look passed over her head. “Frankie, you’re not okay.”

 

Frankie dropped her head into her hands. “I know.” The dirty speckles on the kitchen table were suddenly fascinating. She could stare at it forever. “But I’m not going to get worse in the next half-hour, and I’m hungry. Can we wait? Please?”

 

Donna nodded slowly, and lowered herself into the chair across from Frankie. Patty narrowed her eyes, but sat down next to her and shoved a plate across the table. “Eat.”

 

Frankie ate.

 

* * *

 

Andrew arrived while they were washing the dishes- or rather, while Patty and Donna were washing the dishes, because Patty insisted that she didn’t want Frankie’s gross blood germs getting into the water and giving her food poisoning, so she stayed put at the kitchen table. She called him once they’d finished eating, at Donna’s insistence, and explained the situation by saying “my hands are going crazy or something, I don’t know.” To his credit, he hadn’t asked any questions, just promised to come right over and hung up.

 

When he knocked on the door, Patty and Donna both looked up from the sink, but she just called “come in,” and heard the door open, and then he was standing in the kitchen doorway unwinding a scarf from his neck and looking at her with eyes full of concern. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

 

“I’m fine.” Frankie pushed herself up out of the chair and went to take his coat. “Andrew, this is Donna and Patty. Guys, this is Andrew. He’s been . . .” She trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence without it sounding really weird. “Helping me out,” she finished lamely.

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Father,” Donna said over the dish in her hand. Patty was eyeing his collar suspiciously, but she nodded politely. “Nice to meet you.”

 

He nodded at each of them in turn, and as his back turned, Donna mouthed “ _nice_ ,” over his shoulder at Frankie. Frankie just shook her head fondly.

 

Andrew stopped at the table, fingers skimming the papers as he frowned down at them. “Did you write this?” He picked one up and peered at it. “I didn’t realize you spoke Latin.”

 

“I don’t,” Frankie said, lowering herself back into the chair. “That’s why I called you. We found it on the kitchen table this morning.” She watched him scrutinize the paper, lips pursed. “What does it say?”

 

“It says . . .”  He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and set them on his nose. “Jesus said : "If those who lead You say to You, ‘see, the Kingdom is in heaven’, then the birds of the sky will be there before You. If they say to You, 'it is in the sea', then the fish will be there before You. But the Kingdom is inside You and outside You. When You know yourselves, then You will be known, and You will know that You are the children of the Living Father. But if You do not know yourselves, then You dwell in poverty; then You are that poverty." "

 

Frankie sat quietly, chewing on her lip and absorbing what he’d said. “And the stuff at the top?”

 

He frowned at it. “I could be wrong- I’m not a translator- but I believe it’s Coptic writing. Presumably it’s the same text in its original language.”

 

Donna set her plate down and sat next to Frankie, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Is it from the Bible, Father?”

 

“Call him Andrew,” Frankie murmured.

 

He shook his head, forehead furrowed. “No, it’s not- at least, no version I’ve studied, and I’ve studied several. This passage doesn’t appear in any of the Gospels.” He set the paper down and walked around the table to where Frankie was sitting. “May I see your hands?”

 

She held them out, palms up, fingers uncurled. He took each one in his hands, running his thumb over the pad of her palm and holding her fingers closer to his face to examine them. “Did you feel any different when you woke up this morning? Tired or groggy?”

 

“My hands were sore,” she said, trying not to shiver as he ran his fingers over her knuckles. “I thought it had something to do with the stigmata.”

 

“It might have,” he said, dropping her hands. She wrapped her fingers into fists and rested them on her knees. Did he know what he was doing, when he did that? Was he doing it on purpose? “May I use your phone? Some of my contacts may be able to identify the writing.”

 

She nodded. “It’s in the front hall.”

 

He nodded and moved back out the door. He hadn’t noticed her reaction, but Donna had, and she nudged Frankie’s knee with a grin. “Priest, huh?”

 

Frankie groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Shut up.”

 

“He’s kind of cute,” Patty said mischievously, moving behind Donna’s chair and dropping a hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “And you seem to like him.”

 

Frankie was blushing furiously, not helped by the fact that both her friends were all but winking at her. “Of course I like him. He’s trying to help me figure stuff out. That doesn’t mean I-”

 

“ _Like_ -like him?” Donna said, etching out air quotes with her fingers. Frankie threw a napkin at her. “Yeah, that. And even if I did, it’s not like it would matter. I’m pretty sure you noticed the collar.”

 

“He could leave it on,” Patty said thoughtfully. “It might be kind of hot.” She nudged Donna’s shoulder. “Hey, we should try that sometime.”

 

“You- ugh!” Frankie threw her hands up. Donna and Patty were both laughing openly now. “I can’t believe I’m getting this from the Catholic school graduates.”

 

“Catholic school doesn’t breed the depravity out of you,” Donna said, mock-gravely. “It just makes it worse.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Seriously, Frankie, you seem into him. And he seems to like you.”

 

Frankie dragged a hand through her hair. “I’ve got bigger problems than whether or not I should date a priest, guys.”

 

“Maybe,” Donna said. “But you know what makes me feel better when things are going shitty?” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Her.”

 

Before Frankie had time to process that, Andrew came back through the door, still holding the phone to his ear. “Yes- no, that’s all right. I’ll fax it to you. _Grazie_. I’ll talk to you later.” He switched the phone off.

 

“Any luck?” Frankie asked.

 

He set the phone down on the table. “None of the text sounded familiar to him, and he can’t identify the language until he sees it himself, though he did agree that it sounded Coptic. I’ll fax him a copy of the papers when I get back to my motel.” He pulled his ever-present notepad from his pocket and flipped it open. “When I spoke to him last night, I asked about other recent stigmatic cases. There don’t tend to be patterns- well aside from the gender, but-” he nodded at Frankie- “you knew that already. But if we can track down any other cases of atheists or non-Christians exhibiting the symptoms, we can-”

 

“Excuse me, Father,” Donna interrupted. “If you don’t mind my asking, how is any of this going to help?”

 

He frowned over the edge of his glasses at her, but it wasn’t an angry expression. “I don’t follow.”

 

“I mean,” Donna gestured, “It’s great that you’re looking for other cases and stuff, but Frankie still getting hurt in the meantime. Isn’t there someplace you could take her? Back to the Vatican or something?”

 

He sighed heavily and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I would if I could. But they wouldn’t take her in.”

 

Donna looked outraged. “Why not?”

 

“Because I’m an atheist,” Frankie said to the tabletop. “He had to lie to them to stay in the city and help me at all.”

 

Patty spoke first. “Bullshit!”

 

Andrew shook his head. “I agree with the sentiment, but I’m afraid she’s right. The Church isn’t-” He broke off and rubbed the bridge of his nose again. “There are certain restrictions in place when working within the organization. As a representative of the Church, I can’t do anything to change it.”

 

Patty crossed her arms mutinously. “I still think it’s bullshit.”

 

“Leave it, Patty,” Frankie said. “He can’t do anything.”

 

He smiled at her, and Donna nudged her knee under the table. Frankie ignored her and focused on what Andrew was saying instead. “I was going to say, I’ve had a friend at the Vatican- he’s aware of the details of the situation, but he can be trusted not to speak about it- looking through other documented cases of stigmata for parallels to your experience. He hasn’t been able to discover any other cases of atheist stigmatics, but he did find several from recent years. The most recent was a priest who died a few weeks ago in Bela Quinto, whose parishioners-”

 

“Wait,” Frankie said. “Did you say Bela Quinto?”

 

He blinked. “Yes. It’s a small town in Brazil.”

 

“My mom is there,” Frankie said slowly. “She called me from there on Friday.” She exchanged a look with Donna. “Could that have anything to do with it?”

 

Andrew looked down at his notepad, frowning. “It might. I’ve never heard of a case where the stigmatic symptoms transferred from one person to another, but the connection seems to well-timed to ignore. Has she sent you anything from Brazil?”

 

“Yeah,” Frankie said, getting excited. “She sent me a box of stuff- it got here the morning she called me. There were some postcards and souvenir stuff in it. And a rosary.” The fucking _rosary_. She hadn’t even thought about it since Saturday morning, when she’d left it on her bedside table. Could it be that simple?

 

He looked up from the notepad. “Do you still have it?”

 

“It’s in the bedroom.” She started to get up. “I’ll go get it-”

 

“I’ll go,” Donna interrupted, scrambling up out of her chair. “Patty, come on.”

 

“But I don’t- hey!” Donna grabbed her elbow and dragged her out of the room, leaving Frankie and Andrew staring at each other.

 

“Your friends are very forceful,” he said mildly.

 

She laughed. “So am I.”

 

“I had noticed,” he said, smiling. If she had to put a word to it, she’d say he was grinning. She was too. “So if this is what’s making the stigmata happen, what then? Do you, like, perform an exorcism on it?”

 

He chuckled. “Nothing so dramatic. Admittedly there isn’t much in the way of precedent for a case like this, but hopefully just removing the relic from your apartment would be enough to stop the stigmata from appearing.”

 

She grinned and rose up out of her chair. Crossing the room in three steps, she reached Andrew and threw her arms around him. “This is _great_!”

 

He froze, and she experience a horrible flash of panic- fuck, what if he’d overheard her conversation with Donna and Patty and she’d freaked him out?- but then his arms rose up around her, and he squeezed her back. She let out a long breath, and hid her smile against his chest. Forget what Donna and Patty had said; forget that he was still wearing the collar; forget that she didn’t have a chance. He was here _now_ , and _she_ was here now, and this whole nightmare was almost over.

 

“I found the-” There was a clatter of footsteps in the doorway that suddenly stopped. “Oh.”

 

Frankie disentangled herself from Andrew and smiled at Donna and Patty, who were looking at her with a mixture of surprise and pride. “You got the rosary?”

 

Patty held her hand out. “Here you go.” She tossed it to Frankie, pulling a face. “Are you sure you don’t want to just toss it down the garbage disposal or something?”

 

“Frankie dangled it in front of her face contemplatively. Now that she knew it may or may not have been responsible for making her spout blood, it looked less like a necklace and more like a demonic murder machine. “It _would_ make me feel a lot better.”

 

Andrew took it gently from her hand. “As cathartic as the experience might be, I suggest we hold off on destroying this until the Vatican has had a chance to study it. If it is responsible for your injuries, it may have properties we don’t understand.”

 

“Yeah,” Donna said, nodding. “Plus, trying to throw it out might just piss it off. Do you think it’s sentient?”

 

“Like that evil Stephen King car,” Frankie said, narrowing her eyes at it.

 

Andrew coughed. “Mr. King is an excellent writer, but in this case, I would rather defer to the Church.”

 

“You like Stephen King?” Frankie said, surprised.

 

He smiled a little. “I do have some free time to spend. The Bible is a wonderful book, but it doesn’t provide quite the same form of entertainment.”

 

“Oh man,” Frankie said, shaking her head. “I have got to show you around the city, because there is so much to do around here besides sit in your room and read.”

 

He looked perplexed. “I like to read.”

 

“So do I, but-” She laughed and shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll show you around anyway, and you can decide if you like it better than the books, okay?”

 

He still looked confused, but he slipped the rosary into his pocket and smiled at her. “I’d like that.”

 

* * *

 

 

Andrew left not long afterwards, after deciding that he’d hang on to the rosary until he could get a flight back to Rome and hand it off to a “specialist” in Vatican City. The thought of him taking off so soon made Frankie’s chest feel tight and achy, but it meant getting the rosary as far away from her as humanly possible, and that was a pretty comforting thought. Besides, he could always come back to visit. Come to scenic Pittsburgh: we have rainstorms and bizarre atheist stigmatics.

 

Donna and Patty left as well, since the long weekend would be over the next day and they needed to get the store cleaned up and ready for opening. Frankie offered to go with them and help, but they declined because she “needed to rest.” Frankie guessed that “needed to rest” was code for “we could use some alone time,” but she didn’t mind. She wasn’t exactly tired, but she could use some time just relaxing and not worrying about stigmata for awhile.

 

She made herself a late lunch- the bread in her cupboard was a bit stale, but it made for a decent grilled cheese- and settled herself down on the couch with some of the books she and Andrew had been reading the day before. Maybe it was just psychosomatic, but it felt like her wounds were already healing- the cuts on her back definitely stung less than they had, and the ones on her wrist barely hurt at all. Anyway, as relieved as she was to not have to deal with gaping wounds anymore, the book had actually managed to catch her interest. It was one of the ones Andrew has brought with him, and offered to leave with her- “if you’re going to show me around, it’s only fair that you try some of my reading material-” about St. Teresa who, according to the book, had also been a stigmatic as well as writing a shitload of memoirs, and founding convents. She seemed pretty cool, even if she had called Jesus her spouse, which Frankie found kind of freaky.

 

Frankie ended up getting so absorbed in the book that she didn’t hear the phone ring at first, and nearly fell off the couch trying to grab it in time. She grabbed the receiver, and held it up to her mouth, hoping she didn’t sound too out of breath. “Hello?”

 

“It’s me.” Andrew. She smiled, curling up with her knees tucked underneath her. “Found anything new?”

 

“No, unfortunately,” he said. He didn’t sound terribly regretful, though. “I haven’t been able to reach Father Delmonico, but it doesn’t matter much- he can’t make any kind of judgment until he sees the rosary. I was just calling to see how you were doing.”

 

Frankie smiled, feeling warmth spread over her face and under her hair. She didn’t need a mirror to know she was probably turning pink, and felt privately thankful that there was no way he could see her right now. “I’m doing fine,” she said. “Chilling on the couch, catching up oh my reading.”

 

“Reading?” he repeated. “I thought you preferred going outside.”

 

She couldn’t actually tell if he was flirting or if he was genuinely confused, but she laughed in spite of herself. “Yeah, well, I guess I got into the habit. St. Teresa’s a good writer.”

 

“Oh!” He sounded delighted. “Are you reading the _Life of St. Teresa of Jesus_? It was one of my favourite texts when I was studying at the seminary.”

 

“Of course it was.” She flipped the book shut and turned it over to the back cover. “She seems really into Jesus. I mean, I know nuns kind of have to be, but she’s _really into Jesus_.”

 

“Ah.” He coughed. “Well. There was a tradition among medieval writers, specifically female ones, to speak of God and Jesus in what you or I would consider overtly sexual terms. You’ll find it in the writings of Margery Kempe and Julian or Norwich as well- often they’d refer to themselves as the wife of Jesus, which can also be found descriptions of women entering nunneries. It was seen as a spiritual marriage, an alternative to the physical bond between husband and wife. Of course, Margery Kempe was already married when she began receiving visions-”

 

“Andrew,” she interrupted. She was smiling, and kind of glad he couldn’t see it over the phone.

 

He coughed again. “Well. Anyway, the point is, there was often an- ah- sexual component to the writings of early female mystics.”

 

“Just the women?” Frankie asked. “There weren’t any monks getting hot for Jesus?”

 

He spluttered a laugh. “Not that I’ve encountered, but I suppose it’s possible.”

 

“Well, there’s a new research project for you.” She grinned. “When you’re done investigating stigmata.”

 

He laughed softly. “I don’t think I’ll be done with that for a long time.”

 

They talked for an hour after that, occasionally lapsing into mutual silence while Frankie flipped through her book. They hung up after he yawned, and then he yawned, and she pointed out that if they kept up like that, they’d fall asleep with the phones on and run up giant bills. She meant to go to bed after hanging up, but the couch was comfortable, and she ended up falling asleep with her head pillowed on the armrest and the book tucked under her elbow.


	7. Chapter 7

She got to the shop at eight the next morning, just as Patty was pulling up the grid. It was overkill- she didn’t need to be in before nine-thirty, and neither did Donna. But Donna and Patty lived together, so they showed up at the same time, which left Frankie slinking in an hour and a half later, and it made her feel like a lazy asshole. So she showed up at eight.

 

Donna was already wiping down the counter when she came in, but she dropped the rag and came out front to pull Frankie into a hug when she saw her. “Hey! Are you feeling better?”

 

“I’m feeling fine,” Frankie said, hugging Donna before pulling back a bit. “What have we got on the schedule for today?”

 

“Lessee.” Donna pulled the appointment book out from under the counter and started to flip through it. “Mrs. Meir’s getting her nails done at three, and Alicia’s coming in to get her hair cut at noon. She said she might bring her little sister with her. So that’s three.”

 

Frankie’s spirits fell a bit. “Just three?”

 

Donna shrugged and shut the appointment book. “There’s always drop-ins.” She took a closer look at Frankie and frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay? You your face is all red.”

 

“Oh!” Frankie put a hand up to her cheek. “I fell asleep on the couch last night and the pillow left a mark.” Donna still looked skeptical, so Frankie gave her a smile. “I’m fine, I swear. Is there anything to do in the back? I’m kind of tired of lying around doing nothing.”

 

“You weren’t doing nothing,” Donna said, “you were getting better. But there’s a bunch of new shampoo bottles that need to be unpacked, if you want something to do.”

 

Frankie clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

 

She hadn’t been kidding, as it turned out, when she’d said “a bunch.” There were fifteen boxes, all piled haphazardly against the back wall, and they wobbled dangerously whenever she took a new one down. Petty had an intricate system in place for hair product sorting, involving alphabetical order by chemical components, so it took her the better part of an hour to finish filing them all away on the shelves. Out in the front room, she could hear Patty crank the music up- Dead Kennedys today- and Donna’s voice, indistinct under the bass line and drums. She smiled and hummed along to the music.

 

“Hey, Frankie?” Patty stuck her head through the beaded curtain. “Can you bring some of the hairspray out front?”

 

“Sure thing.” Frankie turned back to the shelf and grabbed a bottle in each hand. With Patty, whenever she said “some,” it usually meant “two or three.” Frankie grabbed another and tucked it under her arm, just to be safe, turned around, and was hit with a wave of vertigo so bad she nearly toppled over.

 

“What,” she said, blinking stupidly as the third bottle of hairspray tumbled out of her grip and into the box at her feet. She’d worn platform shoes to work- stupid, but she hated sneakers; they made her a head shorter than everyone else- and now she felt like she was going to fall off them any minute. She put the remaining bottles down- her hands were shaking, she noticed- and grabbed hold of the shelf with both hands, trying to steady herself. Another wave of vertigo hit, and she thought she might pass out.

 

She blinked furiously, shaking her head and immediately wishing she hadn’t. The spot behind her right eye was starting to throb, and her stomach was lurching like she was on a moving boat. The shelf wobbled dangerously, and she let go, stumbling back and crashing into the opposite wall.

 

“Frankie?” Donna poked her head through the curtain. “What’s going- _oh_.”

 

Frankie would have answered, but she was too busy clenching her hands into fists, the pain of nails against her palms anchoring her to the room. It was still spinning. She took a deep breath. “I- I don’t feel so good.”

 

Donna grabbed her arms and pulled her over to a chair against the back wall, pushing her into a sitting position. “Should I call Andrew?”

 

“Nnnrgh” Frankie muttered, letting her head loll against her shoulder. “It was supposed to be over.”

 

“I know, honey.” Donna knelt in front of her and put a hand on each of her knees, rubbing gently. “But I don’t think it is.”

 

“I don’t-” Frankie bit her tongue and swore. Shooting pains were traveling down her legs and into her feet. She could feel the cuts on her forehead splitting open, and the warm blood trickling down her face and into her eyes. “Feet comes next, right? Or-” Her eyes flew open. “Shit! The spear!”

 

“It’s feet,” Donna said quickly. She knelt down and pulled Frankie’s shoes off. “I’m gonna get a towel, okay? So we can keep you from bleeding too badly.”

 

“Won’t do any good,” Frankie muttered, closing her eyes again. But Donna was already gone.

 

It felt the same, and yet different at the same time- she could feel everything around her in a way she hadn’t been able to with the other wounds. The plastic edge of the chair was digging into her shoulder blades, and the air smelled like aerosol and floral shampoo. Before, when it had happened, she’d only been able to feel pain- and it was still there, licking at the edges of her consciousness, but she could also feel the stale air in her lungs and the floor under her feet. Her feet, which still felt like they were about to burst open. She leaned back in the chair and groaned.

 

Donna came bursting back through the curtain, with Patty at her heels. “I brought towels.” She dropped them on the floor. “Patty, grab one of the rinse buckets. We can put her feet in them.”

 

“I’m not,” Frankie struggled to sit up. “I’m not going to start bleeding. It’s not happening again.”

 

“Frankie,” Donna knelt down and started wrapping her feet in the towels. “You already are.”

 

Frankie couldn’t argue that- her back felt sticky and wet against her shirt, and the bandages on her wrists were turning bright red again. Even her mouth tasted wet and coppery. She closed her eyes.

 

The first blow of the nails against her foot- nails she really couldn’t see now, which made her feel even crazier- made her sit bolt upright in the chair, howling at the top of her lungs. Patty grabbed at her shoulders, trying to push her back down, but she shoved back, slapping ineffectually at her hands. “Let me go!”

 

“You’re going to hurt yourself!” Patty shouted, while Donna stayed kneeling at her feet and hanging determinedly on to her knees. The second blow hurt worse than the first, but she really couldn’t move now- Patty had moved around to the back of her chair and was holding her shoulders down, so she just thrashed against their hands and cursed loudly.

 

Being in the room, feeling her friends’ hands on her, anchoring her to the ground seemed to make it shorter- or maybe it was just because there were only so many times nails could be driven into a person’s feet before it became overkill. It still hurt like hell though, and Frankie jerked up and down in the chair with every blow, alternately swearing and sobbing. Donna was still rubbing her knees, and Patty stroked her hair clumsily, so she closed her eyes and tried to focus on that, but the pain was so all-consuming, she couldn’t feel anything else when the blows hit. She could taste blood and salt tears on her lips, and feel blood dripping down her back and sloshing around her ankles.

 

When a minute passed without another blow, she slumped down in the chair, and Patty let her go. Her whole body ached, like- well, like she’d been strung up on a cross. The cuts on her forehead and wrists had stopped bleeding, and the drying blood felt stiff and tacky on her skin. Her head was still spinning.

 

“We should call Andrew,” Patty murmured over her head. Frankie couldn’t find the strength to lift her head, so she let it loll on her chest while Donna replied “I already did,” and stood up, putting a hand on Frankie’s head. “Do you want to lie down, hon? He said he’d be here in fifteen minutes, but traffic might be bad.”

 

Frankie was spared from answering by the sound of the bell over the door ringing. Patty got to her feet and brushed her knees off. “We’re closed.”

 

“Frankie?” It was Andrew’s voice. “Are you all right?”

 

“We’re back here,” Donna called. She extended a hand to Frankie. “Can you get up?”

 

Frankie let her head roll back. “Not too likely.”

 

The bead curtain was pushed back, and Andrew appeared in the doorway, looking- if possible- more disheveled than usual. Frankie contemplated him from under heavy eyelids and wondered if he ever actually slept like a normal person, or just took catnaps whenever a crisis was about to pop up. He crossed the room and dropped down to his knees next to her. “Frankie? How are you feeling?”

 

She cracked an eye open. “Like shit, actually.”

 

His hands hovered over her like he was thinking about stroking her hair or patting her knee, but couldn’t summon up the courage for it. Frankie settled the matter for him by tilting forward, and he caught her as she slumped down against his shoulder. He was considerably more comfortable to lean against than the chair, so she closed her eyes again and tucked her head  into his collarbone. His breath stuttered for a moment, and then smoothed out again as he brought a hand up to rest against her cheek. “You should go to a hospital. The blood loss-”

 

“Ughhh,” Frankie said. She’d meant to say “please no; you’re kind of the only reason I’m not passing out right now, and I can’t promise not to if someone breaks out the needles,” but she was too wrung-out to talk, so all she did was tuck her face in closer and mutter “m’okay.” She let out a long breath. “I want to go home.” Specifically, she wanted to go home, crawl into bed, pull the blankets over her head, and sleep until her life managed to get less _fucking insane_. Maybe she’d wake up and discover that the whole thing had been a bad dream. Maybe she’d wake up and discover that she’d won the lottery. She could dream.

 

Andrew hesitated a moment, then curled his free arm under her knees and stood up. “I can take you there, if you’d like.”

 

“Yeah,” she mumbled against his shoulder. “I would.”

 

* * *

 

She slept- or passed out- for most of the drive home, only waking up when Andrew shook her to ask for keys to the apartment. She let herself doze again as he crossed the threshold, then stirred as he gently set her down on her bed. Her feet were still wrapped in the towels from the store, now blooming a deep crimson colour. She stretched her legs out, wincing, and sat up to undo the knots Donna had tied. The towels fell off, and she winced- she hadn’t had a proper look at the wounds before, but each one went all the way through her foot, shredding blood vessels and muscles as it went. Maybe she should go to the hospital- but then, she’d survived the other wounds without doctors poking more holes in her, so she let it be and leaned back on the pillows.

 

Andrew came back into the room with a bowl of water in one hand, and a towel slung over the other. He set the bowl down on the floor and wet the towel in it before glancing up. “May I?”

 

She nodded, and he touched the towel to her foot. It stung like hell- probably he’d put peroxide into the water- and she bit her lip and looked away, blinking furiously to keep her eyes from watering. She was sick of crying. She was sick of being sick. If Andrew noticed her fighting a losing battle with her tear ducts, though, he didn’t say anything, just kept gently wiping the blood away in silence.

 

Frankie was the one who broke it. “There’s one more wound.”

 

Andrew stayed silent for a moment as he dipped the towel again. “Yes.”

 

“The spear wound.”

 

He dabbed at her foot again. “Yes.”

 

“The one that killed Jesus.” Frankie said. “I’ve been getting these wounds almost every day. So if this keeps up the way it’s been going, I’ll be dead by Wednesday.”

 

“That’s not going to happen,” he said sharply, looking up at her. “There’s never been a stigmatic who died of their wounds. Never.”

 

Frankie met his eyes. “You also said most stigmatics only get a few wounds. I have four.”

 

He gave her a long look, then looked down at his hands. “That’s right, I did.”

 

“So. Wednesday.” She took a deep breath. A strange calm had settled over her, like she was already backing away from the real world- the world where she got up for work in the morning and cut hair and went out dancing with Patty and Donna- and fading into a world that she couldn’t quite see yet. But that didn’t mean she was ready to let go. “I don’t- there’s no real way to prepare for it, is there? I mean I could go to the hospital, but they wouldn’t believe that I was about to get stabbed with an invisible spear. I could go to the church, but there’s nothing they could really do. I mean, he didn’t die from blood loss, right?”

 

Andrew was staring at her like she wasn’t even speaking English anymore. “I- no. At least, that’s the theory, but as his body was taken up into Heaven, we don’t really have empirical data.”

 

“So he could have bled to death,” she said, still calm. This- making plans- she could work with. She didn’t know if the plans would _work_ , but it was better than waiting to keel over. “If he did- if I would- stopping the bleeding would be pretty easy. If the problem is that my lung’s getting pierced, I don’t really know how to stop that, unless maybe the doctors cracked me open and then sewed it back up as it happened.” She rolled her shoulders. “But I don’t think they’d go for that.”

 

“No,” Andrew said, sounding slightly dazed, “I doubt it.” There was a pause, and then he cleared his throat. “I did hear back from my contact at the Vatican this morning- he did some research into the man who owned that rosary, Father Alameida. I don’t know how much help it will be, but it’s a start.”

 

Frankie sat up. “Tell me.”

 

Andrew pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it across his knee. “Paul Alameida, born April 26, 1932 in Fatima, Portugal. He joined the church at the age of nineteen, and travelled to Rome after five years in the priesthood. He was a respected member of the Vatican, and some theorized that he would be elected cardinal, but he left the Vatican- and Rome- in 1979, and wasn’t heard from again by any church authorities until 1999, when he died in Bela Quinto, Brazil.” Andrew folded the paper back up and cleared his throat. “Father Delmonico speculated that there may have been an excommunication- he remembers Father Alameida working on a project that caused considerable controversy within the Vatican, some sort of gospel translation- but the details of this project were never made public, and there are no official records. Whatever he was doing, it was discontinued after he left.”

 

“And he had stigmata,” Frankie said.

 

“And he had stigmata.” Andrew unfolded the paper again. “He manifested the wounds starting around 1967, and his parishioners in Bela Quinto reported that he wore bandages on his hands. He didn’t have any wounds when his body was discovered, however.”

 

Frankie held out a hand. “Can I see that?”

 

Andrew passed her the paper, and she stared at it. Parts were so scribbly that she could barely make out the words, but other parts were legible, and her lips moved silently as she read. “What’s mortification of the flesh?”

 

Andrew pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s the practice of putting oneself in pain in order to atone for one’s sins. There were rumours that Father Alameida practiced it, though nothing was ever proved, and he never spoke about it publicly.”

 

“Huh.” Frankie set the paper down. “So . . . any information on why I’d suddenly start getting his symptoms just because my mom accidentally sent me his rosary?”

 

“No,” Andrew sighed, “there isn’t.” He stood up. “You should get some rest. I’ll wake you if I hear anything more.”

 

Frankie nodded, and rolled over on her side, tucking both hands under her head and closing her eyes. Her feet had mostly stopped stinging, but they were still bleeding against the towels Andrew had wrapped around them. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped an arm around them. Everything felt like it was going to fly into pieces any second.

 

She didn’t remember closing her eyes, but she must have, because when she opened them again it was dark. Andrew had turned the lights off when he left, but the door was open, and the light in the kitchen was still on. The curtains were half-drawn, and she could see the faint glow of streetlights outside.

 

She rolled over and sat up, blinking sleep out of her eyes and rolling the kinks out of her shoulders. She looked down. Her feet were still wrapped in towels, but the bloodstains hadn’t gotten much bigger in the interim, and when she swung a foot off the bed and set it tentatively on the ground, there wasn’t much more than a dull ache.

 

Gingerly, she set both feet on the floor and stood up. Her ankles hurt a bit, too, but it was still at a manageable level. She wrapped the duvet around her shoulders, shivering slightly. The room had gotten cold while she slept, and a draft was coming in from the window.

 

Something white fluttered by her foot, and she bent to pick it up. The paper from earlier- Andrew must have left it on the table, where it’d fallen off in the breeze. She picked it up, and smoothed it out against her hand. The writing was harder to read in the dim light, and she squinted as she scanned the page. It said the same thing it had when she’s read it the first time- mortification of the flesh, Bela Quinto, Vatican- all scribbled in Andrew’s inelegant handwriting. She turned the page over. More scribbles, most of them illegible in the dim light. A few words stood out- _Communion of Saints_ , _sanctity_ , _Marian apparition_. And then, at the very bottom of the page, a single word followed with a question mark- _possession?_

 

Frankie froze in place, fingers clenching tighter around the paper. She was mentally cataloging everything that had happened over the past few days- the dizziness, the visions, the feeling that she was somehow out of her own body. The sensation of looking through someone else’s eyes and the strange conviction of things that she couldn’t possibly know. The paper written in her handwriting with words she didn’t recognize.

 

_Just because my mom accidentally sent me his rosary-_

 

The rosary wouldn’t have given her the stigmata. It couldn’t. But possession- if he was in her body somehow, if he was taking her over-

 

She dropped the paper and stumbled backwards, knees colliding with the bed. She sat down hard, head spinning. She felt like she was going to be sick. He was inside her. He’d always been inside her. For days, he’d been lurking, sucking on her like a parasite, and now he was killing her from the inside out. Had he been reading her mind? Did he know what she was thinking?

 

She fucking hoped so. Because now that she knew, she could let him know how much she _hated_ him, how much she wanted him _the fuck out of her head_. She wanted to slam against walls, rip her hair out, do anything that would make being in her body so uncomfortable that he would leave her alone. “Can you hear me? Get _out_! Get the fuck _out_!” She slammed her hand down on the bedside table, hard enough that her knuckles started to bleed. Good. See how he liked it when she was the one doing the wounding, not the other way around. She slammed her fist against the table over and over again as her cracked skin bled freely, gushing over the table and her sleeves, soaking everything bright red. “Is this what you want? You like hurting me? You sick _fuck_ , you think this is in your _bible_ when you don’t know everything, you should be burning in hell-”

 

“Frankie?”

 

She stopped pounding her knuckles raw and looked up. Andrew was standing in the doorway, staring at her, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

 

Hand trembling, she grabbed the paper and held it out to him. “This says,” she said, voice shaking, “that I’m possessed. That all of this is happening because of some kind of fucked-up _Exorcist_ shit, like my head is going to start spinning around, and- you didn’t _tell me_.” She swallowed. Her throat was on fire, eyes stinging with an unaccountable sense of betrayal. “Why?”

 

He sighed, crossing the room and taking the paper from her hand. “I didn’t tell you,” he said slowly, “because I don’t think it’s true. By the Church’s own doctrine and history, possession is almost always caused by demonic forces- not ghosts.”

 

“And ghosts can’t be demons?”

 

“No.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Demons, within the Christian- or at least, the Catholic- tradition, are lesser fallen angels who serve under Lucifer. For Father Alameida-” he swallowed hard- “to be a demon would make no doctrinal sense. He was never an angel. Men can’t become angels or demons.”

 

“Doctrinally, me having stigmata at all makes no sense,” she pointed out. “And here we are.”

 

He didn’t say anything. His hand curled around the paper, and he looked at it, swallowing hard again. Frankie stared at him, unflinching. “With something this big, you _need_ to tell me. Even if it might not be true.”

 

“You’re right,” he said softly, after a pause. He raised his hand like he was going to touch her, then shook his head. “You’re right,” he said again, a little louder. “I’m sorry.”

 

She nodded. “Is there any point doing research into possession? I mean, if the Church doesn’t think ghosts can possess people, there won’t be any books about it.”

 

“I tried already,” he said. She raised her eyebrows. “When Johnny- Father Delmonico- suggested it to me, I looked through the books I had on the subject. They were all in agreement on the impossibility of it. As I said, there’s no precedent. And-” He stopped suddenly, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

 

 _And a priest could never be a demon_ , she thought. That was what it was about, wasn’t it? She’s all but kicked his ideas about the way God was supposed to work in the face, and now he’d come up against something that went so far against what he believed, he couldn’t accept it. Even if it was possible. Even if it was _true_.

 

“I’m going to get something to eat,” she said finally, just to fill the silence. “Do you want anything?”

 

He shook his head. “I ate earlier.”

 

She brushed past him on her way out the door, letting her hand lightly graze his arm, a sort of offhand reassurance. He shifted slightly towards her, breathing heavier, but she was gone in the next second.

 

In the kitchen, she filled a mug with ramen noodles and water, then stuck it in the microwave before drifting back out into the main room. Andrew was sitting in the armchair, where he’d most likely been all afternoon, head bent over a book. She hesitated, not sure whether or not to approach- what would she say?- before deciding against it and fishing a cigarette out of her pocket while heading over to the window. Throwing it open, she lifted the cigarette to her lips and lit it, inhaling deeply as she looked up at the night sky. It was unusually clear- normally she couldn’t see anything but a thick blanket of smog, but tonight there was a faint sprinkling of stars peeking through the gloom. It felt like they- or whoever was hanging out behind the, _if_ anyone was hanging out behind them- were saying hello. It was an oddly comforting thought. She hadn’t expected it- couldn’t, really- but having another person inhabiting her body was one of the loneliest fucking experiences of her life. She wondered if God was watching the whole thing.

 

“Hello?” she said, experimenting. She felt like a dumbass. “Anybody up there?”

 

No answer.

 

“If you are, I want you to know . . .” She let the sentence trail off. What could she possibly say? “You’re an asshole for doing this to me?” “Call off your demon rosary?” “Tell me what you want from me?”

 

“I could really use some help,” she said finally. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected- a burning bush, a lightning bolt, Mufasa’s silhouette in the smog. What happened was . . . nothing. The stars kept on twinkling. There was no cutout in the sky or big booming voice telling her to lead her people out of the desert or give birth to the saviour. Just radio silence.

 

“Figures.” she muttered.

 

“Who are you talking to?”

 

She started, then turned around. Andrew was standing in the hallway looking vaguely confused, a blanket draped over his shoulders. He frowned at her. “Are you all right?”

 

“Fine.” She stepped away from the window and closed it. “I tried talking to God, but I guess I just got his voicemail. You ever hear from him?”

 

He smiled a little. “Not in so many words. God rarely speak to His followers in a language we can understand, Frankie. He uses subtler means.”

 

“Funny,” she said. “I wouldn’t have called nailing holes through my hands and feet ‘subtle.’” She brushed past him on the way to the kitchen. “Why, how did he talk to you?”

 

Andrew followed her, still holding the blanket around his shoulders. “It’s not as simple as speaking the way you or I would. When God calls on someone, He doesn’t employ words. He can’t. It’s not how He Works.”

 

“Really?” Frankie popped the microwave door open and took the mug out. “You’d think he could do whatever he wants, considering he’s supposed to be all-powerful.”

 

“He-”

 

“Works in mysterious ways, I know.” She leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “So how did he speak to you? You said he called you to the priesthood; you must have heard _something_.”

 

Andrew hesitated, rubbing a hand over his face. “I . . .” He sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “I doubt you’d be interested.”

 

“I am,” she insisted. “You must have had a reason. I want to know.”

 

He blinked and rubbed a hand over his face again, apparently just realizing that his glasses were back on the table in the sitting room. “I entered seminary school in 1994, but it was at the end of a long period of personal crisis. I doubt you’d remember the Cold War-”

 

“I’m not _that_ young,” she interrupted, smiling a little. “I remember the news broadcasts.”

 

“Right.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I told you I was an organic chemist before I joined the priesthood. We didn’t work on nuclear weaponry- that’s a physicist’s job- but everyone in those days was talking about the bombs. I looked at my work, and I looked at the damage we had already done during the second world war, and I thought-” He took a deep breath. “Was this worthwhile? Was my pride in my work worth killing thousands of people, maybe millions? I couldn’t justify it.”

 

She nodded slowly, absorbing what he’d said. “But how did that lead you to the priesthood?”

 

He smiled. “There was a church a few blocks away from where I worked in those days, and when I went home for the day, I got into the habit of stopping there to sit for awhile, or talk with the priests.” He chuckled. “I asked them so many questions about how they understood God’s plan for us when the world seemed to be going to hell that eventually one of them told me I should go into the seminary to get my questions answered. I laughed at the idea at first, but it became- a fixation, almost. I wanted to understand. I’d always wanted to understand, but now I needed to know what God wanted from us rather than how to break down an organic compound. One of the priests I’d met recommended me to a seminary school in Rome. So I went.”

 

Frankie nodded, contemplative. “And did you find what you were looking for?” She twirled a fork in the mug and raised a mouthful of noodles to her lips.

 

He shook his head. “One of the first things we were taught is that we cannot hope to understand God’s plan. He works in His own ways, and our job was to try and carry out His work on earth.”

 

Frankie frowned. “But how can you carry it out if you don’t know what he wants?”

 

Andrew laughed. There was an undercurrent of weariness to it. “Guesswork, mostly. Guesswork and the Gospels.”

 

“Seems like a pretty uncertain way to live,” she said, “considering you tell everyone what to do so God will let them through the pearly gates.”

 

He shrugged. “We’re more of a work in progress than some of my superiors might like to admit.”

 

“Mmmhmm.” Frankie set the mug down on the counter and tilted her head, turning over what he’d said. She hadn’t expected it- well, truth be told, she hadn’t _expected_ anything. She didn’t know what made anyone want to go into the priesthood, or into science, or anything else. She’d gone into hairdressing school because she liked cutting her dolls’ hair as a kid, and it made her happy, but it wasn’t a _calling_. Maybe this was her calling, if she had one. Maybe she was just shit out of luck enough to have a calling that was going to kill her.

 

“So if you’re a work in progress,” she said carefully, “that means you might not . . . Know everything, right? About who can possess people?”

 

He hesitated for a moment. “That’s . . . logical, yes.”

 

“So he _could_ be possessing me,” she said. “And the church just wouldn’t realize.”

 

He hesitated for another, longer moment. “I suppose it’s possible. But-”

 

“But,” she finished for him, “you don’t want to believe it.” She watched his face for a reaction. He didn’t deny it.

 

“No,” he said. “I don’t. I’ve been reading about Father Alameida’s life, and whatever else he was- whatever lead him to leave the Vatican- he was a devout believer in God and his works. The idea of him not only possessing another human being but doing _this_ to them . . .”

 

“You don’t want to believe it,” she said. “That’s- I get that. But honestly, how much choice have we got at this point? Time’s running out.” She felt like she was spouting movie trailer cliches- _time_ _’s running out, we don’t have a choice_ \- but it was true, so she kept pushing forward. “Can we at least- I don’t know, pretend? Act like we do believe it until a better option comes along?” Privately, she thought a better option wasn’t very likely. She felt- or thought she felt- Alameida creeping under her skin, an oily slithering sensation that made her want to scrub herself until she was raw. But Andrew couldn’t feel that, and it didn’t matter how many times she told him so.

 

“We need to at least try,” she said softly. He took his glasses off again, and rubbed his eyes.

 

“All right.” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

She was woken the next morning by the insistent shrilling of the telephone. Groaning, she rolled over in bed, and slapped a hand down on the bedside table, trying to remember where she’d left the cordless extension. She found it buried under a pile of unwashed clothes on the floor, and hit the “on” button on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

 

“Frankie?” The voice on the other end was male, high-pitched and anxious. “Is this Frankie Paige?”

 

She blinked. “Father Derning?”

 

“Yes- I apologize for calling so early, but a matter’s come up, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to reach you- you didn’t leave any contact information, and Father Kiernan hasn’t got a portable phone, so I wasn’t able to get in touch with him, and it’s very important-”

 

“Father Derning,” Frankie said, suppressing a yawn and rubbing a hand over her eyes. “What’s going on?”

 

There was a long pause, and a rush of breath on the other end of the phone. “It’s-” Another pause. “The girl you spoke to on Sunday, Rebecca Stanley- you remember her?”

 

Frankie’s heart rate picked up, thumping painfully against her ribs. “Yeah, I do. Is she okay?”

 

“Oh-” There was a muffled noise on the other end. “She’s quite well. But she and her mother came in this morning, and they- well, they’d like to speak with you. If you’re amenable.”

 

“Um,” Frankie said. “They want to speak. To me.”

 

A pause. “Yes . . . ?”

 

“Why?” With her free hand, she fumbled for the jeans she’d dropped at the side of the bed, and started struggling her way into them. “Did something happen? Is something wrong? What do they want to talk to _me_ for?” She had a fairly extensive imagination- albeit a slightly exhaust one, after the past few days- but when she cast her mind out for reasons a girl she’d seen once, for five minutes, would want to speak with her, she came up blank.

 

“Something did- happen,” he said. He sounded reluctantly. “All parties involved are fine- well I suppose I shouldn’t say that, given your current . . . circumstances. But it’s difficult to explain over the phone. If you came down to the church, perhaps it would be easier to explain face-to-face?”

 

Frankie glanced at the clock on her bedside table, which was blinking 9:24. It was Tuesday. Assuming this kid wasn’t homeschooled, she should be in class right now. Whatever had “happened,” in Father Derning’s vague, vague words, it was dramatic enough to pull a ten-year-old out of class so she could go to church and talk to a virtual stranger instead.

 

But he’d said everything was fine.

 

But everything hadn’t been fine when she’d spoken to Rebecca before.”

 

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said into the phone, and hung up, pulling an oversized flannel shirt over her head. She did up the buttons as she walked out of the bedroom, and found Andrew sitting on the couch, reading with one hand and spooning cereal into his mouth with the other.

 

“Hey,” she said. “Feel like going to church this morning?”

 

He looked up, lying the book down on his knee. “Not that I ever object to churchgoing, but do you have any particular reason for asking?”

 

“Father Derning called,” she said, tucking the shirt in. “He sounded really weird, and he didn’t explain anything, but the basics are, something’s gone down with one of his- church-people-”

 

“Deacons?”

 

“No, the people who come to church for Mass.”

 

“Parishoners.”

 

“Right. Anyway, something up with one of them who was there when I was last Sunday, so he- or she, I guess- wants me to come down so he can explain in person. I don’t know, he was really vague. Anyway, you want to come?”

 

He nodded, and set the cereal bowl down on the coffee table. “Just let me rinse this out.”

 

They took Andrew’s rental car to the church- for some reason, he’d opted to drive while he was in the city- and Frankie filled him in on what had happened the previous Sunday while he drove, until they pulled into the church parking lot. He didn’t have much to say, just frowned contemplatively and nodded whenever she suggested something.

 

“To be quite honest with you, I’ve no idea what this visit could be about,” he said as he got out of the car and locked it. “Unless the child witnessed something that eluded your eye while you were there, which seems an unlikely scenario. Then again, children have traditionally borne witness to many Marian apparitions, so it’s possible . . .”

 

As they pushed open the side door, Frankie caught a glimpse of two adult figures standing at the end of the hallway- Father Derning and Rebecca’s mother, she assumed- before a high-pitched squeal split the air, followed by the sounds of small feet pounding against the carpet, and Frankie was nearly thrown off-balance by a tiny figure colliding headlong with her midsection.

 

Rebecca beamed up at her, throwing her arms around Frankie’s waist. “You came!”

 

“Uh,” Frankie said awkwardly, looking helplessly back at Andrew. “Yeah, I did.” She reached a clumsy hand up to pat the girl’s hair. “So, what’s new with . . .” She trailed off midsentence, eyes widening.

 

Rebecca bounced backwards on her heels, grinning ear to ear, her arms- both arms, neither one encumbered by the cast she’d been sporting days earlier- swinging at her sides. “My arm’s not broken!” she said excitedly.

 

“Yeah,” Frankie said, a little dazed. “I can- see that. Yeah.”

 

“You fixed it,” Rebecca said proudly, dancing up to hug her again. “I told my mom and she told Father Derning, and he said so. You fixed it! Like Jesus!”

 

Frankie cast another glance back at Andrew, who looked almost as confused as she felt, and then back up to where Father Derning and Rebecca’s mother were standing. Her mother was the first to move, walking down the hall and gently prying her daughter loose. “Becky,” she said, “can you do us a favour and go draw? The grownups need to talk for a bit.”

 

“Okay!” Rebecca said, not sounding the least bit perturbed, and bounced back off towards the body of the church. Frankie watched her go, still dazed, while her mother looked on with a sort of affectionate pride. She turned to Frankie, smile still firm on her face, and took one of her hands. “I’m not sure how I can thank you.”

 

“I-” Frankie said. Mrs. Stanley- or Ms, who the hell knew? Not her- looked down at the bandage on her wrist, and a frown crossed her face as she released Frankie’s hand. Frankie swallowed. “I don’t- I’m not sure you should be thanking me. I mean, I don’t think I did anything.”

 

“But-” Mrs/Ms. Stanley’s face fell slightly. “You spoke to Rebecca and signed her arm, and the next _day_ , she was healed. The doctor didn’t know how to explain it. He thought she was lying. And your marks, your-” She gestured helplessly. Frankie looked over her shoulder at Father Derning, who was shifting uncomfortably on the spot. Rebecca’s mother continued, apparently unaware of the discomfort behind her. “Father Derning said that you’d had experience, mystical ones. Surely you can’t deny that something must be connected there, even if you don’t understand-”

 

“Mrs. Stanley,” Andrew said from behind her, and she nodded in response. Well, that was an answer to the Ms/Mrs question, at least. “Did your daughter tell you that Ms. Paige was responsible for her healed arm?”

 

Mrs. Stanley shook her head. “She had no idea at all. After the x-ray said that the bone had healed and the cast was taken off, I asked her if anything unusual had happened in the past few days, anything out of the ordinary. She just told me that Ms. Paige signed her cast. She didn’t think anything of it. I took the question to Father Derning, and he agreed with me. There’s no other explanation.” She beamed at Frankie, practically glowing. “You healed her!”

 

“It does seem like the most plausible explanation,” Father Derning said quietly, coming up to stand at Mrs. Stanley’s shoulder. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t credit you with it- no offence meant, but miracles like this are not a commonplace occurrence, especially among doubters- but the timing combined with your other injuries seems to coincidental to ignore.”

 

Frankie gawped at both of them, unsure what to say, if anything at all. Then something occurred to her.

 

“Mrs. Stanley,” she said slowly, “how did Rebecca’s arm get broken in the first place?”

 

Frankie saw the older woman’s hand clench, and her smile fell from her face. “Why do you ask?”

 

“I’d like to know,” Frankie said quietly. “Did she fall off her bike or something?”

 

Mrs. Stanley swallowed, once, twice. It looked painful. “Yes,” she said tightly. “She- fell. Riding her bicycle.” She chewed on her lip, apparently contemplating something. “But the- bicycle in question is gone now. I threw it out. She won’t be injured by it again.”

 

Frankie nodded, feeling a knot that had been somewhere in the pit of her stomach since Sunday dissolve. “That’s good to know,” she said sincerely. “But I’m still not- I mean literally, I didn’t do anything. All I did was sign her cast. If I wasn’t trying to fix her arm, and I’ve never healed anyone before, how is it possible . . .” She trailed off. “I mean, I just don’t see _how_.”

 

“Honestly,” Mrs. Stanley said firmly, “I don’t think it matters all that much. Rebecca’s arm is better. Everything-” Her voice trembled slightly. “Everything’s all right now. I have Father Derning to thank for some of that. But I think you deserve thanks as well.” She turned to Father Derning, shoulders held high. “I should take Rebecca to school. She’s already missed her first class.”

 

“Of course,” Father Derning said with a nod, and handed her her purse. “I’ll see you again next Sunday?”

 

“Of course,” she said, smile back in place. She nodded again to Frankie. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Ms. Paige. And- thank you. For whatever it is you did.” With that, she turned and walked out. In the next room, Frankie heard her call to Rebecca, and then the front doors opening and closing. Silence stretched out between the three people still standing in the hallway.

 

“That was-” Frankie started, then stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what that was.”

 

“It was quite something,” Andrew agreed, coming up behind her, and putting a hand on her arm. “Though I’m not sure that the situation will improve with this publicizing of your situation?”

 

“Publicizing?” Frankie looked from Andrew to Father Derning, frowning. “How many people did you tell?”

 

Father Derning shifted uncomfortably. “Only Mrs. Stanley. But . . .”

 

“But news of a miracle like this will spread quickly,” Andrew finished for him. “Especially within the church community. Especially regarding a church that’s been struggling with decreasing membership and could use a public display of faith like this to bring people back into the fold.” He was looking at Father Derning with an expression she’d never seen on him before. It was almost calculating. “Was that the idea? Or did you simply not _think_?”

 

Father Derning’s face had turned a mottled red and white colour, and his throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed hard. Frankie stared at him. When she’d come to the church, too delirious to know where she was or what was happening, he’d promised to help her. That was the only thing she’d been able to hear. Call her stupid, or naive, or gullible, but she’d _trusted_ him. The idea that he had some kind of ulterior motive hadn’t even entered her head.

 

_I thought I might be able to help you._

 

“We should go,” she said out loud, taking Andrew’s arm and letting her nails dig into his sleeve. He put a hand over hers’ and nodded. Father Derning, still red-and-white in the face, jerked his head in response. “Yes, that’s- that’s most likely a good idea. If there are any- developments- I’’ll let you know.” He couldn’t meet her eyes.

 

Neither Frankie nor Andrew spoke walking out into the parking lot or getting into the car. It was only when they’d pulled out into the road that Frankie broke the silence. “How did you know?”

 

He glanced over at her. “How did I know what?”

 

“Don’t be stupid,” she said impatiently. “How’d you know why he told her about the stigmata? I never-” She bit off her words. “It didn’t even occur to me.”

 

He stayed quiet for several long moments, curling and uncurling his fingers around the steering wheel/ He had long fingers, she noticed idly; long fingers and big hands. “Because,” he said finally. “I’ve worked in the church for a long time now- not so long as he has, but a significant amount. I’ve seen the ways in which the need for conversion can outweigh common sense. And . . .” He trailed off.

 

“And?” she prompted.

 

“And,” he said, “I might have made the same choice, at one point.”

 

She sat in silence for a moment. “But not now?”

 

“No,” he said, “not now.”

 

She stared at her hands, resting limply in her lap. The bandage on one wrist was starting to peel, and she picked at it with a fingernail, pulling it further and further away from her skin. “Because it’s not right,” she said slowly, “or because it’s me?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

Back at her apartment, she left Andrew sorting through his papers on the coffee table, and locked herself in the bathroom. Bracing her forehead against the mirror- when had it gotten so dirty?- she sucked in deep breath after deep breath, trying to re-orient herself back in her body. The floating feeling was back, and worse than ever, because she could practically feel Alameida crawling under her skin, scraping nails against her throat and lungs, breathing though her throat and nose, waiting for her to fall asleep so he could take her over again.

 

What did he _want_?

 

So he’d had stigmata; why would he want to replicate the experience with her? She wasn’t- this wasn’t his body. It belonged to _her_ , no matter how much he tried to speak/move/write with her hands and her mouth and her legs. Reflexively, she clenched her fists at her sides. If that was what he wanted, he’d have to put up a bigger fight than this.

 

“Do you hear me?” she said out loud. Her voice echoed against the bathroom tiles, but there was no response. “I said, do you hear me? Come on, asshole; you never had a problem coming out before.” Silence. “Are you scared of me? What, you won’t talk while I’m listening? Well listen to _this_ , fucker; I don’t care how many holes you punch in me, I’m not letting you kill me. You hear me? You can’t-” she slammed her hand against the medicine cabinet- “fucking-” Slam. “- _have me_.”

 

“Frankie?”

 

She let out a long exhale, and rubbed her hands over her face. “What is it?”

 

“Could you come out here for a moment?” Andrew’s voice drifted through the bathroom door. “I think I may have found something.”

 

After another lingering look at herself in the mirror- pale, eyes bloodshot, but definitely her- Frankie padded back out into the living room. Andrew was standing next to the coffee table, an open book in his hands. “What’s up?”

 

“I found this-” He gestured with the book in his hands. “-in the collection of books I brought with me from Father Derning’s. Initially I didn’t give it more than a cursory look because it pertains to the ritual of exorcism more than the stigmata, but there’s material in here that I think may help you, if I can apply it in-”

 

She held up a hand, and he fell silent, looking at her expectedly. “You said _exorcism_.”

 

He nodded. |Yes.”

 

“So . . .” she said slowly. “you believe me now. You think it’s possession.”

 

He set the book back down on the table. “It was never a matter of not believing you, Frankie. The theory- concerned me- because I didn’t believe-” He stopped, and bit his lip. “-didn’t want to believe that possession by Father Alameida was a viable option. But given the particulars of the situation, I’ve come to the point where I can’t accept any other option.”

 

She nodded again, casting her mind back. _I might have made the same choice._

_Because it_ _’s not right, or because it’s me?_

She crossed the room until she was standing toe-to-toe with him, looking up into his face. “Thank you,” she said softly, “for believing me.” He didn’t answer, but he put a hand on her shoulder, and offered her a wavering sort of smile. “I must repeat, it was never about disbelieving you.”

 

Her breath caught. Her limbs seemed to be rebelling against her- Father Alameida, maybe, kicking and screaming at what she was about to do, but she didn’t give a shit. This was still her life and her body, and she was going to do what she wanted with it. She was sick of holding back.

 

She tilted her head up and kissed him, standing on her toes to reach his face and winding both hands behind his neck to hold herself in place. In her head, she could feel Alameida’s seething, impotent rage, but she pushed it back and pressed herself closer to Andrew. He couldn’t take this away from her. Not yet.

 

Andrew froze for a moment when she kissed him, and she thought he might pull away, but then he cupped the back of her head with both hands, fingers winding in her hair and pressing against the nape of her neck. He tasted warm, like the coffee he’d been drinking and the soft light that was slanting in through her windows. She closed her eyes. _Let this not stop. Please, let it not stop._

 

But it had to. He released his grasp on her head, and she slid her hands back down to her sides and stepped back. He raised one hand to his mouth, fingers ghosting over his lips like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. She couldn’t quite believe it either- not that she’d kissed him- she’d always had poor impulse control- but that he’d kissed her back, even for a moment.

 

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I know with the collar and everything, you can’t- I’m sorry.”

 

He nodded slowly, like he was still trying to absorb everything. “I’m sorry as well.” He dropped his hand and looked at her. “I’m afraid I might have given the impression that- not entirely mistaken, and I don’t believe I was dishonest, but-” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I may have let me personal . . . desires interrupt my job.”

 

She nodded. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

 

He smiled weakly. “Now would be the time.”

 

“Why don’t they let you do- this?” She gestured between the two of them, and he frowned. “I mean- I like you, and you like me, and if it made you happy, why is it not allowed? Is it some kind of suffering thing? Like, Jesus suffered for you, so you have to suffer right back?”

 

He shook his head slowly, still frowning. “I wouldn’t- suffering isn’t the right word, in the eyes of the church. It isn’t a question of what we want. When you join the priesthood, you essentially wed yourself to God, and your life is dedicated to doing His works. One of the conditions of joining is rejecting earthly attachments.”

 

“And that means sex?”

 

He made a huffing noise, turning slightly pink. “The wording in canon law specifies celibacy, which means ‘unmarried’ in its purest form. But as you know, it’s come to mean abstaining from sexual relations, yes.”

 

She crossed her arms. “Aren’t you supposed to love your neighbour?”

 

He let out a sudden snort of laughter that made her jump. “In a spiritual sense, yes. Not in the physical. I’m afraid if we applied that principle to all our parishioners, we would have very little time to do anything else.”

 

“I think it’s stupid.”

 

He was quiet for a long moment, a frown creasing his forehead. “Why?”

 

“Because of the idea that love somehow takes you away from God.” She shook her head. “Look, you’re supposed to appreciate everything he does, right? All things bright and beautiful? So everything’s great, you love the whole world, but when it comes to something _everyone_ feels, you’re somehow breaking your vows if you feel it too? It’s bullshit.”

 

He opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly snapped it shut as Frankie’s eyes widened. Her arms snapped up at her sides, elbows bent, and then flung themselves over her head so hard that she screamed. Her feet slipped on the floor, skidding out from under her and she fell to her knees with a crack. Her back arched, and her mouth opened in a silent howl, but she couldn’t get any sound out- her tongue was trapped against the roof of her mouth, and all she could do was choke for air as she tried to regain control of her arms long enough to brace herself against the floor.

 

She flipped over onto her back and went flying backwards, slamming into the far wall hard enough to knock the wind out of her lungs. She curled on her side, gasping for air, but she hadn’t gotten more than a lungful when words began burbling from her lips in a harsh, deep voice. “ _Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead! None who go to her return or attain the paths of life!_ ”

 

Andrew edged towards her, hand outstretched. “Frankie?”

 

She flipped again, this time down onto her stomach, and began to crawl towards him on her elbows. “No, no,” she moaned, but it didn’t do any good; she could feel Alameida reaching out to grip her mind again. “D _o not turn aside from what I say! Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house, lest you lose your honor to others!_ ”

 

Andrew stopped and stared at her. “Father Alameida?”

 

Frankie felt her mouth work, and she spat on the floor. “ _Harlot_ ,” Alameida hissed through her lips. “ _With persuasive words, she leads you astray. Do not listen! She desecrates your body, she threatens your faith, she-_ ” Frankie clamped her mouth shut, gritting her teeth to try and block the words. It wasn’t working. “ _She is Jezebel who killed the Lord_ _’s messengers, she is unclean, she-_ ”

 

“I’m _giving_ him your message!” she shouted. Her throat felt like it had been scraped raw. “What do you want from me?”

 

Alameida roared and dragged her upright, bending her knees almost double so that she had to reach both arms out to balance herself. He dragged one foot forward, then the other, while she struggled to pull herself backwards hard enough to overbalance. Another step. Another. He was taking her to the kitchen- where the carving knives were.

 

“Andrew,” she gasped. “The knives-”

 

Andrew lunged forward and caught her around the waist, dragging her back. Alameida snarled and kicked, biting and scratching every bit of bare skin he could find. He had hurt her before, but this was different. He was enraged, almost bestial, and he would kill her if he could. She knew it. “Andrew,” she said around Alameida’s shouts. “Don’t let go, _don_ _’t_ -”

 

“I won’t,” he panted, dodging her flailing arms. “I’ve got you.”

 

Frankie let herself go limp in her mind, dropping her chin to her chest as Alameida raged through her limbs, wrenching her legs and arms hard enough to burn. He was still shouting and snarling, alternately in English and Latin. She couldn’t understand the Latin, but she caught enough words she recognized to understand that he was still railing against her. She didn’t have the energy to keep fighting, and Andrew’s arms still held her solidly in place, so she closed her eyes and waited for Alameida to stop.

 

He did, eventually- it couldn’t have taken more than five minutes, but it seemed like hours- and she slumped over, still muttering under her breath, hair trailing on the floor. “ _God_ ,” she mumbled, “ _God made him king of all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women . . ._ ” She trailed off. For the first time since the screaming had started, her head felt blessedly quiet.

 

Andrew’s arms tightened around her. “Frankie?”

 

“’M alright,” she mumbled, eyelids drooping. “I think he’s gone now.” She felt boneless, like Alameida had taken all her strength with him when he’d faded back into the recesses of her mind and left nothing but a weak, useless, injured body. She wanted to stand up just to prove she could, but she didn’t think she’d be able to. She hurt too much.

 

Andrew didn’t seem in a hurry to get up either, though. He presses her lips against her hair, and let out a long breath. “Frankie, I-” He broke off. “I’m sorry.”

 

She let her head dangle from her shoulder, staring at the floor. She couldn’t focus her gaze enough, and the floorboards, looked blurry. “It’s okay,” she mumbled. “Can you put me in bed? I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”

 

He shifted his grip on her, sliding a hand under her knees like he had back at the shop, and stood up. She let her head loll against his shoulder and closed her eyes. He felt comfortable warm and solid and _real_ , and she let herself breathe that in while he crossed the room to reach her bedroom door and gently deposited her on the bed. She was dimly aware of him pulling the bedcovers over her shoulders and stroking her hair back from her forehead, before his footsteps receded into the kitchen, presumably to clean up the mess Alameida had made.

 

She dozed lightly, listening to the sound of Andrew cleaning the kitchen, but she didn’t fall asleep. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the pillow, trying to stave off a pounding headache that she knew was on its way. She stayed that way until she heard the footsteps coming back, and felt a shadow falling over the bed. She cracked an eye open. “Andrew?”

 

The shadow shifted. “Yes?”

 

She held a hand out towards him. “C’mere.” He hesitated for a long moment, and she gestured weakly. “It’s okay. C’mere.”

 

He walked silently across the floor, and sat down on the bed next to her. She opened both eyes then, watching him as he put his legs up on the mattress and laid down next to her, putting a gentle hand on the side of her face and stroking. She sighed lightly, hooking a hand in the front of his shirt and pulling him a bit closer, close enough to put her face against his chest and breathe in. She let out a full-body shudder, and he put an arm over her shoulders, a hand against her neck. It was the last thing she felt as she drifted to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

“-can’t take her-”

 

“-don’t know what you’re doing-”

 

“-not appropriate-”

 

“-what’s _appropriate_ is-”

 

Frankie cracked an eye open, looking from Andrew on the bed beside her to the bedroom door. He wasn’t lying down any more, but sitting on the bed next to her, one hand still on her shoulder. His arm was thrumming with tension, clenched around her in a way that was just shy of painful. He was arguing in quiet, furious tones, with someone she couldn’t quite see.

 

She shifted her head and craned her neck to see the door. Andrew didn’t notice- he was too intent on the argument. Neither did the group of dark-clad men standing in her doorway. In her _bedroom_ door. She blinked. What the fuck was going on?

 

“-don’t think you have this under control,” one was saying. He was the oldest of the three, grew-haired and with a red belt (sash?) tied around his waist. “Father Derning told us on the phone that she appeared to be getting worse by the day, and you’re simply not trained or qualified to deal with this sort of situation. If you give her into our custody, we can help-”

 

“You don’t know what her situation _is_ ,” Andrew said, low and urgent. “You’ve no idea- I didn’t even believe it myself, but the evidence-”

 

“You can fill us in on the evidence once she’s with us,” the older man said smoothly, as if Andrew hadn’t interrupted at all. “But for the moment, her most urgent need is to be cared for by people who are trained to deal with situations like hers’, who aren’t compromised by-”

 

“You have no _idea_ -”

 

“Hey,” Frankie said, struggling into a sitting position. Both Andrew and the men in the doorway started guiltily. “I don’t need to be in anyone’s custody. I’m not a child.”

 

The older man smiled beatifically at her. She stared stone-faced back at him. “I’m afraid Father Kiernan hasn’t explained the details of his position very well at all. As an investigator for the Vatican, his job is to gather data and report back to us. A case that puts the subject in imminent physical or spiritual danger is something he’s simply not equipped to handle. That’s where we come in.”

 

“I wasn’t talking about Andrew,” she said stubbornly. “I was talking about _me_. I don’t want to go with you. And you can’t force me to. That’s kidnapping.”

 

He sighed, still smiling like he was dealing with a recalcitrant child. While he was gathering his next argument, Frankie let her eyes sweep over the two men with him. One was a bald, glasses-sporting man she’d never seen before, clutching a notebook like Andrew’s in his hands The other was Father Derning, who couldn’t meet her eyes when she looked at him.

 

“We would like to help you,” the older man said with another smile. His smiles were starting to creep her out. “But we can’t do that while you remain here. If you come with us back to our Pittsburgh headquarters, we can explain everything-”

 

“I’m not going with you,” Frankie said, voice growing louder. “I don’t know who you are, or why I should trust you. You broke into my house and I woke up to find you in my _bedroom_. I don’t even know your name-”

 

“Ah,” he said, extending a hand, though how he intended for her to shake it from the bed was a mystery. “My name is Cardinal Daniel Houseman. This-” he indicated the glasses-wearing man behind him, “-is Pietro Cavallo, my secretary. And of course you’ve already met Father Derning.”

 

“Good for you,” she said. Beside her, Andrew made a noise that sounded like it might have been a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean I know you, or trust you, or want anything to do with you. I’m not getting into a car with you, or going to your headquarters.” Who even said _headquarters_ these days, unless they were some kind of weird Masonic cult? “You’re not taking me out of this room.”

 

Cardinal Houseman sighed heavily. “Well I’m afraid we cannot, in good conscience, leave you here. It would be in violation of our duties to the Church.”

 

“ _Duties_?” Andrew said, his voice coloured with disbelief. “Daniel, you’re not- you can’t _lie_ to get her to go with you.”

 

“I have absolutely no intention of lying,” Houseman said. He met Andrew’s eyes, and the look in them made Frankie shiver. “But I also have no intention of leaving without her, so we appear to be at something of an impasse.”

 

Frankie held up a hand. “Um, can the she under discussion suggest something? Or were you planning to keep on arguing like I wasn’t in the room?”

 

Houseman looked back at her, and this time he wasn’t quite able to suppress the annoyance in his eyes. “Did you have something to suggest?”

 

“That’s what I _said_ ,” she gritted out. “Look, you want me to visit your- headquarters or whatever, right? So what if I didn’t do it right this second?”

 

Houseman’s mouth thinned. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

 

Frankie sat upright, and shoved the blankets down to her waist. Houseman winced, though she was still wearing a camisole. It wasn’t like she’d ripped her shirt off or anything. “I’m not coming with you now, but I could come to your headquarters later. After I, you know, get dressed-” She glanced sideways, “-and talk to Andrew about it.”

 

Houseman’s jaw worked, and she could practically see the wheels turning in his head. If he walked out, there was every chance she’d take off as soon as the door was closed. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t planning on it. But staying wasn’t going to get him anything either, except a kidnapping charge if he tried to drag her out by force. Her hand was already hovering on the bedside table, over the telephone receiver, and his eyes were tracking it as it moved. She lowered her fingers, and he drew himself up.

 

“Very well,” Houseman said, sickly sweet smile back in place. “But it shouldn’t be put off any longer than it must. I’m not sure you quite realize the danger-”

 

“I realize,” she said coolly. He shut his mouth abruptly, face reddening. “I’ll be there tomorrow.” She calculated quickly in her head. She’d fallen asleep In mid-afternoon, and there was no light coming in from the windows. So either it was early on Tuesday, or late on Monday. Either way, she’d be at their church before the final mark appeared. And if she did get pierced by a spear, at least she’d probably bleed out all over their carpets.

 

“Tomorrow,” she repeated. “At one in the afternoon.”

 

Houseman nodded to his secretary, who wrote something- the date, presumably- down in his notebook. Frankie watched him with narrowed eyes. When he was done, Houseman looked back towards her, still smiling tightly. “Well, I suppose we’ll see each other then.”

 

Frankie watched them go. So did Andrew, who didn’t relax his grip on her shoulder until they heard the front door snap safely shut. Once it did, Frankie dropped her blankets and looked over at Andrew. “I think you’d better tell me who they were.”

 

He nodded. “I think so.”

 

* * *

 

“Daniel- Father Houseman- was my mentor when I first arrived at the Vatican,” Andrew began. They were sitting in the living room. Frankie drew her knees up to her chest and nodded at him to continue. He did. “At the time, the branch I work in was only just starting out, and he was looking to recruit young priests who were more amenable to his goals than those who were more . . . stuck in their ways.” His mouth quirked. “I suppose I qualified.”

 

She frowned. “Why would investigating stigmatics be controversial?”

 

Andrew rubbed a hand over his chin thoughtfully. “It wasn’t the investigation so much as it was the . . . approach. Ironically enough, his goals were far more in line with traditional Catholic theology than many might have suspected; the Church has never embraced every supposed miracle presented to it, though the public might view it differently. What he wanted most from us was a discrediting of the fakes and to bring the true ones into the fold of the Church, where they could be safely folded into our doctrine. As a scientist, it made perfect sense to me. It’s like cryptozoology-”

 

“Crypto-whatology?”

 

“The study of aberrant scientific findings, usually animal in nature,” he explained, “like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot. Anyway, these claims frequently frustrate serious scientists, because they catch the public imagination and spread misinformation about what is and isn’t provable. Of course the Church would face similar difficulties. After all, it’s easy to claim you saw the Virgin Mary in a cloud, and difficult to prove otherwise. The human mind sees what it wants to see.”

 

Frankie held up both wrists and raised her eyebrows. Andrew smiled. “Yes, well, I think we’ve proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that your experiences are genuine. But Cardinal Houseman doesn’t know that. And honestly, I’m not entirely sure how he might react if he discovered it.”

 

“Why?” Frankie asked, curious. She didn’t trust the Cardinal at all- something about him just pinged as off- but why he’d be threatened by her, she didn’t know. “Because of the atheism?”

 

“That- and the question of possession. We know now that your injuries are being caused by some kind of spiritual assault by Father Alameida. Daniel and the Father did not part on good terms, to the best of my knowledge- I wasn’t there when he left, but I understand that he and Daniel clashed frequently over interpretation of the Gospels- but even so, accusing a priest- even a dead priest- of spiritually assaulting a layperson is an incredibly serious charge. For more reasons than one.”

 

“Because . . . ?”

 

“Because we’ve never encountered it before. If it were only the accusation of Father Alameida attacking you, it could be dismissed as the spiritual failing of an excommunicated member of the clergy. But demonic attack by ghosts has never been accepted by the mainstream church. It would need to be contextualized in some way that the public would understand, lest it cause a panic among congregants afraid of attacks from similar sources. That’s what he’s afraid of, I think.”

 

Frankie sat back in her chair, gnawing thoughtfully on her thumbnail. “So . . . what does he want to do with me?”

 

“Andrew bit his lip for a long moment. “I . . . I’ve known Daniel for a long time, and I believe his faith is genuine. But it is also tied very closely to his position. I wouldn’t have believed it otherwise, but what he said about being required to take you away simply isn’t true. And if he was willing to lie about that, I’m not sure what else he may be willing to do. Offer you hush money, possibly. I don’t want to believe it, but . . .” He broke off with a heavy sigh. “I truly don’t know what to believe anymore.”

 

Frankie tilted her head to the side as she watched him. He looked pretty awful- nowhere near as bad as she did, but his eyes were half-ringed with purple bruises, and red around the rims. She didn’t know what he was feeling. The idea of having her faith shaken had never occurred to her, just because she’d never had a faith _to_ shake. Everything she’d ever believed had come from what she saw and felt. The idea of a loving God, a church filled with good people, a Jesus that kept bad things from happening- it was all completely foreign to her. The past few days had rocked her so hard _because_ she’d been confronted with evidence of things she’d never, ever believed. She honestly didn’t know how she would have reacted, if she’d been confronted with things that shattered the beliefs she already had.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

 

He looked up sharply. “Don’t be. None of this is your fault.”

 

“I know that,” she said. “I don’t think it is. But whatever this Houseman guy is up to- he must have meant a lot to you. And I’m sorry.”

 

He let his shoulders slump, and she scooted a little closer, putting a hand on his back. They hadn’t really talked about what had happened in the kitchen since Alameida had come roaring in- so much was happening so fast, she didn’t know if trying to comfort him like this was still safe. But she didn’t really have any ideas for what else to do. And- he was leaning into her touch with another soft sigh. If this was taking them to a place they weren’t supposed to go, they’d deal with that when they both weren’t emotionally drained and exhausted.

 

“So,” she said after  pause, “what do we do? When we go talk to them, I mean.”

 

He smiled ruefully. “I’d say that you’ll be the one doing the talking, but given the circumstances, it might be best if I stepped in. I know the terminology.”

 

“Like a lawyer,” she joked. “A really religious lawyer.”

 

He cracked a smile. “I wasn’t aware any existed.”

 

She laughed a little- more a breaking of tension than anything else, but it felt good. She patted his shoulder, and eased out of her chair. “I need to go make a call. I’ll be right back.”

 

He raised his head. “Who are you calling?”

 

“Donna and Patty.” She stopped in the doorway and held up a hand to forestall any objections. “They shouldn’t be involved in this- I know that. But they already are. And they’re my friends. I at least owe it to them to explain some of what’s going on.” When he frowned, she added, “I won’t tell them about the possession stuff. I’ll just let them know that some Church guys showed up and we’re going to go talk to them. That’s all.”

 

He nodded at her wearily. “Go ahead.”

 

“I wasn’t asking permission,” she said, but she said it lightly.

 

* * *

 

“Frankie, you _can_ _’t_!”

 

Frankie winced and held the phone away from her ear. “Uh, I appreciate the concern and all, but can we keep it down a bit? My head is killing me.”

 

“Sorry,” Donna mumbled contritely. “But seriously, Frankie- these guys sound scary. You can’t just walk into their house and expect nothing’s going to go wrong.”

 

“I think it’s a church, actually-”

 

“Like that makes it any better!” Frankie winced again. Patty was chiming in from another extension. “Seriously what are these guys, like, Jesuits? Those are some _scary_ fuckers, Frankie. I remember one time in school-”

 

“Guys!” Frankie said, rubbing her forehead. “I’m not going alone, okay? Andrew’s going with me. Besides, they can’t do anything until they figure out if I’m really being felt up by a holy spirit. I think that might piss off the big guy upstairs.”

 

“Everything they do probably pisses off the big guy upstairs,” Patty muttered. “What did Andrew say about how they’d figure it out? Are they going to, like, dunk you in water?”

 

“That’s witches, Patty,” Donna said.

 

“Whatever. Are they?”

 

Frankie took a deep breath and crossed her fingers behind her back. This was the hard part. She could deal with leaving bits of her story out, as a necessity to keep everyone involved safe. Outright lying was another matter. But she couldn’t very well just say “oh yeah they tried to kidnap me this morning and God only knows what kind of shit they’ll pull if they think it’ll shut me up.” Just telling them this much was enough of a risk. “He, um. Doesn’t know.”

 

“Doesn’t _know_?” Donna cried. Frankie pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Bullshit! He works with them!”

 

“They’ve never had a case like this before.”

 

“So what, they’re using you as a guinea pig?” Patty this time. “Everything about this sounds fucked up.”

 

“It is,” Frankie admitted. “But it’s all I’ve got going for me right now. I have four marks now, remember? The fifth one is the spear. And it can’t be too far away. I don’t know what these guys are going to do, but if there’s a chance they know how to stop this, I have to at least try.”

 

Silence, then, on both ends of the line. Frankie perched on the edge of the kitchen table. “Look, I’ll call you guys as soon as I get back tomorrow.”

 

“ _If_ you get back,” Patty muttered mutinously.

 

“When I get back,” Frankie said firmly. “I’ll talk to you then, okay? And I’ll be fine.”

 

“Yeah,” Donna said. Her voice sounded smaller than usual. “We love you, Frankie. You know that, right?”

 

“I know,” Frankie said. “I love you guys too.” On the other end of the line, Patty murmured her agreement. “I have to go now, okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

 

They said their goodbyes, and Frankie let her thumb rest on the handset, chewing her lip anxiously. There was another call she had to make, but she’d been putting it off for days now. She’d argued to herself at first that it didn’t need to be made- no point kicking up a panic over something that could go away- but at this point, there wasn’t any avoiding it. She dialled the number.

 

It picked up after three rings. “Hello, Bela Quinto Motel. Elisa speaking.”

 

“Hi,” Frankie said, trying to inject some brightness into her voice. “I’m calling to talk to Janice Paige. Can you connect me to her room, please?”

 

“One moment,” There was a pause as elevator music floated down the line. Then Elise returned. “I’m sorry, she’s not in her room at the moment. May I take a message?”

 

“Um,” Frankie bit her lip again. “Just- just that her daughter called, and that I’ll call again sometime tomorrow. Thanks.” She hung up, and stared at the phone for a long moment before putting it back on the counter and padding back into the living room.

 

Andrew was, once again, sitting on the sofa, but this time he wasn’t looking through his notes. Instead, his head was bowed, and his fingers were pressed to his lips. Round wooden beads dangled from his hands- a more benign specimen than the one her mother had sent her, but still a rosary. His lips moved, but his voice was too low for her to catch.

 

She stood in the door and watched him pray, wondering what he was praying for. She wondered if God was listening. “I’ve never seen you pray before.”

 

He looked up, placing the rosary down on the coffee table. “I haven’t prayed for a very long time.”

 

“Mmm-hmm.” She moved into the room until she was standing in front of him. “What’s going to happen tomorrow?”

 

He half-lifted his hands, like he wanted to put them around her waist, then dropped them. “I honestly can’t say. I would suggest-” He blinked. “I would tell you that there’s no danger in whatever happens, but we both know it would be untrue.”

 

She nodded. A strange sense of peace was settling over her- like she was staring so far forward, whatever happened in the present couldn’t touch her. A part of her wanted to kick and scream against it- she was _not_ living for a million years from now, she wasn’t giving up like that- but another part let it drift over her, settling in like a blanket. Normal concerns suddenly seemed very far away. “Can I kiss you goodbye? Before we go, I mean.”

 

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then nodded, and she leaned down and pressed her mouth to his. After everything that had happened, she’d almost expected fireworks to start going off, but it didn’t feel anything like that. Instead it was calm, a sheltered oasis in the raging hurricane that had become her life- both of their lives. His mouth was dry and warm and his lips were firm. She cupped his face in her hands, and his rose up to wrap around her waist. She could feel the heat pressing against her skin, which felt disturbingly cold, even in the mid-April warmth. Why did she already feel like a corpse? How could her life have ended in less than a week?

 

She broke the kiss, but not the contact, leaning her forehead against his. He sighed deeply, and she felt his eyes closed. “I tried, Frankie- I’m afraid I’ve been weak.”

 

“No you _haven_ _’t_ ,” she said fiercely, almost angrily. “And _I_ _’m_ the Jesus figure here, so I should know. So shut up.”

 

He chuckled lightly. “Is that in the Bible?”

 

“And Jesus sayeth unto his disciples, ‘shut the hell up, you’re being stupid?’” Frankie considered. “Maybe it’s in one of the lost gospels. Ask our friendly neighbourhood ghost, maybe he knows.”

 

He stayed silent for a long time, so long she thought she’d made him angry. Just before she pulled away to ask, he said “is that what I am? A disciple?”

 

She shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean that, exactly. I mean- I don’t want you to go do my bidding or anything.”

 

“It’s not that.” He looked up, face still caught between her hands. “A disciple, strictly speaking, isn’t a servant or minion. It means a follower, a believer. The origin is a derivative of a Latin word meaning ‘learn,’ but it’s more commonly associated with being a believer in something or someone. So in that sense, I suppose I am your disciple. After a fashion.”

 

Frankie blinked hard, trying to quell the hot tears welling up in her eyes. She wanted to say something, but didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just leaned her forehead against his again and tried to breathe deeply. In a few hours, she might not be able to anymore.


	10. Chapter 10

The headquarters- or the Church of Our Lady of Christ, as the sign out front called it- was on the outskirts of the city, so far that they had to stop for gas when they were halfway there. Frankie spent the trip with her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window, lost in thought. Andrew tried to start a conversation with her once or twice, but she only mumbled a response, and he had the sense to leave her alone after that.

 

He’d explained what little they could expect from the tribunal (his words, not hers) as they’d driven up. The traditional approach was for the person in question to be called in and questioned along with witnesses (”so they’ll want to talk to Donna and Patty?” “no, they’ll only want to speak to me”) before giving her a medical exam and looking through all of the evidence to see if it was “theologically sound,” whatever that meant.

 

“Strictly speaking, they should be either bringing the Consulta here or sending you to Rome for a proper examination,” he’d explained, “but I very much doubt they will. In this case, they’re keeping things under wraps as much as possible. If they use Vatican money to pay for flights to and from Rome- more so than they already have- it would arouse too many suspicions.”

 

“So the higher-ups don’t known what’s going on?” she’d asked.

 

He’d hesitated. “A cardinal like Daniel is already a highly-ranked official, second only to archbishops and patriarchs. A cardinal’s job is to advise the Pope on theological matters. Technically speaking, they _are_ the higher-ups. I just don’t know if anyone outside Daniel’s coterie is aware of what’s been happening, or why he’s here.”

 

They’d fallen asleep- well, he’d fallen asleep- on the couch, with Frankie curled against Andrew’s chest like a cat, eyes wide in the dark. She was filled with restless energy, like the kind that could only be burned off by running a marathon or climbing a mountain. The muscles in her legs jumped whenever she shifted, and she could feel a tingling sensation in her fingers and toes.

 

She knew where it was coming from. _He_ was still there, and he was excited. The meeting with the cardinals would be his day in court, and he could barely contain his excitement. Her head was buzzing with his anticipation, and it hurt. _What are you planning?_ she asked silently. There was no answer, but she wasn’t expecting one; she just wanted to vent. _What are they going to do to me? Are you going to let them?_ As much as Father Alameida had hurt her over the past few days, he was- in a weird way- her ally against the cardinals. She didn’t trust them any more than she trusted Alameida, but only one of them was stuck in her head, maybe as much as she was stuck in his. She still hated him, but she knew he didn’t like Houseman any more than she did, and whatever they planned to do to her would affect him too. It was the only bargaining chip she had.

 

 _Are you listening?_ No answer. _Look- whatever happens tomorrow happens to both of us, whether you like it or not. You know that. So- if I let you out- if I let you do whatever it is you want to do, say your piece- will you leave me alone then?_

Nothing.

 

She hadn’t told Andrew. He’d asked her when she got up that morning how she felt, but she’d only nodded and offered a half-smile and a “fine.” She didn’t know how he’d react if he knew what she’d offered, but she found she didn’t much care. Whatever happened next was up to her, now. She had to decide for herself.

 

The building itself didn’t look much like the headquarters of an evil organization- it looked old, sure, but not the kind of old that involved stone pillars and gargoyles sitting on the room. If anything, it looked like a museum, complete with the sign out front: “CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF CHRIST. Masses 5pm, 8 am, 10 am. He is risen!”

 

“Is it an actual church?” she asked as they got out of the car. She’d been expecting that the building would be empty, aside from the cardinals and whoever else worked there. She hadn’t expected a . . . cathedral.

 

Andrew glanced up at the sign. “Masses are held for those who work here and don’t wish to drive into the city to attend a different church. But it’s not open to the public.” He looked at her sideways. “It’s . . . exclusive.”

 

She nodded.

 

There was a hall inside, covered with red carpet so thick that her feet sank into it when she took a step. She’d forgone her platform shoes for today, and worn her only pair of sneakers instead- her feet didn’t hurt too badly anymore, but it was better safe than sorry, especially if she started to bleed again. Or, she reasoned, if she had to make a run for it. Not that she could run very far this far outside the city.

 

How was this her _life_?

 

“Hello, Miss. Paige,” Cardinal Houseman said, approaching her with that same affable smile glued to her face. She met his eyes, but refused to smile back. Something about this place just smelled wrong- like it was soaked in some kind of chemical perfume that made her nose itch. Looking in his eyes only confirmed it- though maybe that was Alameida’s presence in her head, restless and pulling like a dog at the end of a leash. Like he was trying to say _it_ _’s time! Let me go!_

 

“It’s Ms,” she said curtly, clenching her hands inside her jacket pockets. He ignored her, turning his attention to Andrew instead. “Father Kiernan. And how are you this morning?”

 

Andrew’s smile looked just as forced. “Anxious for this to be over with.”

 

“I think that’s something we’re all hoping for.” Houseman extended his hand, and Frankie watched as Andrew shook it mechanically. Both of them were smiling like their teeth were clenched. She let her attention wander as Houseman made mindless conversation, looking up at the arched ceiling over her head and the paintings on the walls. There was floor-length triptych to her left, with three bright red panels of Jesus dangling from the cross, gore dripping from his wounds. _I know how you feel, buddy_. If God was in the church, he wasn’t in this one. This was- this was pain, seeping from the walls and lining the inside of her mouth and nose like dust or fog. It made her want to cough. God was love, she remembered from her grandparents’ church; if there was any love in this building, she couldn’t sense it.

 

“Shall we meet in my office?” Houseman asked, dragging her out of her reverie. She glanced sideways at Andrew, who shrugged slightly. She looked back at Houseman. His lip was curling. “If you say so.”

 

At his gesture, she and Andrew followed him down the hallway, into the main body of the church. A peaked roof soared overhead, and the stained glass windows let a little light in- not much, though. It was raining outside, and she could hear the patter of droplets against the walls and the bleak roll of thunder in the distance. It seemed to fit the mood. The electricity in the air was in her now, too, crackling at the ends of her fingers whenever she brushed against something and tingling along her skin.

 

 _Come on_ , she urged silently. _You_ _’ve been waiting for this_. If Alameida responded, she couldn’t feel it; all she could feel was the air pressing down on her, like a hand clapped over her nose and mouth. She came to a stop in the aisle, struggling to bring words to her mouth, but they wouldn’t come. She couldn’t breathe.

 

She grabbed at her throat, trying to cough and only succeeding in making a croaking noise. Andrew turned at the noise, frowning and taking her arm. Ahead of them, Houseman began to turn around. “Frankie?”

 

She wrenched her arm out of his grip. “ _Don_ _’t touch me_.”

 

“I-” Andrew started, but she spun away from him, arms flying up in front of her face. Her throat had loosened, and words were pouring out like they had before in her apartment. “ _You wanted to silence me, Daniel_?”

 

The blood had drained from Houseman’s face, save for twin red spots on his cheeks. “Miss- Miss Paige?”

 

“ _No_ ,” She could breathe again, but not under her own power; Alameida was working her throat and nose. “ _Ignore the girl. She means nothing. Speak to me, Daniel_.” She felt her lips stretch into a contortion of a smile. “ _You can_ _’t deny me any longer_.”

 

“Miss. Paige, I-”

 

“Don’t!” Andrew shouted, but Houseman wasn’t listening. Frankie felt her feet leave the floor as she flew at him, arm swinging out in a slap. Houseman ducked, and she fell past him, scrambling back to her feet almost as soon as she hit the carpet. _She, her_ \- only none of it was actually her, but Alameida pulling her arms and legs in whatever direction he wanted. He was still pulling her face into a smile. “ _Still don_ _’t believe me, Daniel_?”

 

“I-” Houseman had begun to edge backward, still ashen-faced. “Who am I speaking to?”

 

The laugh that Alameida ripped out of her throat felt like fire. “W _ill you deny me three times, Daniel? But more- how often did you lie to see me thrown from the church? Too many lies_. _They_ _’ve come calling for you_.”

 

Frankie tried to relax inside her own head, pulling back from the need to wrestle control of her body back from Alameida. She’d asked for this; she couldn’t back out now. But it wasn’t easy. Everything in her was screaming at Alameida to get out of her head and give her her body back before it was too late- before whatever was going to happen, did.

 

 _Ignore the girl_.

 

Fuck _that_.

 

No one else in the church was aware of what was going on in her head- Andrew and Cardinal Houseman were both staring at Alameida-Frankie as he rambled on. “ _You thought you had me silenced, didn_ _’t you? Cast out and forgotten. But I didn’t lose faith. I brought the gospel with me. And now it’s translated and finished- my life’s work- and you can’t stop it. Your church will fall_.”

 

“Why Frankie?” Andrew said, so softly that she thought it might escape Alameida’s notice; it seemed to escape Houseman’s. But he turned her head around to face Andrew, slowly. She could feel his confusion roiling at the forefront of her mind. “ _She was where I needed her to be. The gospel needed to be told. How else was I to speak?_ _”_

 

You could have spoken for yourself she tried to say- think- but she was interrupted by a sharp stab of pain driving through her ribcage. She wanted to bend over and grab the wound, but she still couldn’t move on her own, and Alameida didn’t even seem to have noticed. She could feel a hot wetness spreading down her side and through her shirt, and while she couldn’t look down to see what it was, she could guess from the looks on Andrew and Houseman’s faces. Blood.

 

She felt the cuts on her forehead and back split, and the burning flow of blood soaking through her hair and skin. She didn’t know what she expected Alameida to do, but it was anything but what he did- _laughing_ , a hyena’s bark of glee as her blood soaked the carpet beneath her feet. “ _You can_ _’t deny me, now Daniel. Can you?_ ”

 

In a flash, she understood. The stigmata had never been a punishment, not to him. He’d wanted this. He’d wanted this because in his mind, where endless pain meant God’s love, the stigmata signaled that he was special, chosen. It was a sign that Houseman had been wrong, that God really did love him best.

 

Was that all this had been? Some kind of bizarre cosmic sibling rivalry?

 

The blood draining from her wounds left her cold and shivering, so much so that she almost didn’t notice when her feet left the ground. She only noticed it when one of her sneakers fell off her feet and landed on the wet carpet with a soft plopping noise. Andrew shouted his alarm, and Houseman gasped, but Alameida- still wrapped up in his joy- didn’t seem to hear either of them. “ _Do you hear me, my Lord? Can you see me? I am not afraid to die_.”

 

And strangely, Frankie realized, neither was she.

 

* * *

 

“Frankie?”

 

She blinked once, then did it again just to make sure she was doing it of her own volition. Sure enough, she was- but something still seemed off. She held her hands out in front of her, flexing her fingers to see if they still moved properly. They did. She wiggled her toes. Same thing.

 

It was then that she realized what was wrong- she wasn’t standing on anything. For some reason, that didn’t see nearly as weird as it should have, but it was still weird. She looked around. She was still floating near the roof of the church, though she was considerably less blood-covered than she had been, and-

 

Was that _her_?

 

“Frankie,” the woman’s voice said again, drawing her attention away from the Frankie-figure that was floating a few feet away from her. In front of her was a dark-skinned woman, also floating- because why the hell not, really- dressed in a coarse brown robe with a long blue piece of fabric draped over her head. She was barefoot- not that it much mattered, since they weren’t standing on anything- and smiling at Frankie in a way that put her at ease, though she wasn’t sure how.

 

“I’m so proud of you,” the woman said softly, step-floating forward to cup Frankie’s cheek with a gentle hand. “You’ve borne my son’s wounds with more bravery than he ever could have asked for, these last few days. We’re all so proud.”

 

 _My son_. “ _Mary_?” Frankie said incredulously. It made no sense. What was she to the Virgin Mary? And yet . . . she was floating outside her body inside a cathedral. Weirder things had happened.

 

The woman- _Mary_ \- smiled at her gently. “I wish I could have taken your pain away, as I wish I could have taken my son’s. But it had to be you. And you fought so hard. It’s time to let go.”

 

Frankie glanced back over her shoulder at where her body was still floating, arms flung back, head tipped towards the ceiling. “Wait. I have questions first.”

 

Mary smiled again. “You’ve earned them.”

 

“What-” Frankie stopped. God, what was she going to ask first? She wanted a million answers, and she didn’t even know what to ask. “What’s all this been about? Was it just because Alameida got thrown out of the church? What’s going to happen to him now? Is he going to hell? Do I need to have an exorcism? Am I dying?”

 

Mary held a hand up. “You’re confused. I understand. God-”

 

Frankie interrupted. “I know you’re God’s wife or whatever, but please don’t say that He works in mysterious ways.”

 

Mary threw her head back and laughed. The sound reverberated against the walls of the church, and Frankie glanced down to see if Andrew and Houseman had noticed. Neither seemed to. “I promise, I won’t say any such thing. What I meant to say is what God’s plan- God’s love-” She paused. “He is misunderstood by His children, often. I’m afraid Father Alameida was one of them. He started out well, but he was lost for a long time.”

 

Frankie’s head swam. “So . . . Cardinal Houseman was right to kick him out?”

 

“No,” Mary shook her head. “Paul-” It took Frankie a moment to realize she meant Alameida. “-was pure in his intentions, though he grew warped over the years. Daniel is . . . small. Afraid. They both are. And they’ve both allowed their fear to lead them to terrible places. But in the end, neither really understands God’s plan. Well- few can. But their interpretation . . . misses the point.”

 

“So what’s the point?”

 

Mary let out a soft sigh. “Paul fought for the gospel’s translation because he believed it held the key to salvation. Daniel fought against it because he was afraid of what it meant for his position, for his church. But the truth is, the written path to salvation means very little in the end. Neither of them can lay claim to God’s secrets, because He does not reveal himself- even to me.” She smiled again. “Love is mysterious, sometimes. Alameida will have what he wants, but perhaps not in the way he expected. Look.”

 

She turned her gaze upward, and Frankie followed suit. Scrolling across the roof of the church, in flowing god cursive, was the gospel Alameida had been translating- all in the original Coptic, which Frankie sound she could still somehow read. _The kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you. Not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood, and I am there_.

 

“Father Houseman might try to scrub that away,” Mary said mildly, “but I doubt it will come off. As I said, neither man holds the path to salvation, but it is worth the reminder. The building blocks of his church should not be hidden from view.”

 

“Sounds Protestant,” Frankie said, still gazing upward. Mary laughed. “What is there to protest, really?” Her smile faded, face growing serious. “But now I need to offer you a choice.”

 

Frankie looked back at her. “Which is?”

 

“I can take you with me now,” Mary said gently. “You will leave this world behind, and with it all the pain you have suffered. You will enter the kingdom of Heaven as one of God’s beloved children, but you will die in order to do so.”

 

Frankie swallowed. “Or?”

 

“Or,” Mary said. “I will leave you here. Father Alameida will be leaving with me- your body will be your own again. I’m sure you’ve missed that.” She smiled wryly. “I know a thing or two about having one’s body re-purposed for God’s work. I cannot promise you an easy road, should you choose to stay. Daniel Houseman will not back down, even with what he has witnessed today. You may need to leave your home, your friends. Should you choose to accept my offer and continue carrying out God’s work, you will be subject to whatever harm may befall you. I cannot protect you from that. But you will live. As I did.”

 

It wasn’t a question, not really. She’d been fighting all week; why stop now? “I want to live.”

 

“I thought you might,” Mary said. “Remember God- and I- are always watching over you, no matter how dark things may seem. He loves you. As my son does. As I do.” She step-floated past Frankie, towards her still-suspended body. “Paul?” she said quietly. “I’ve come to take you home.”

 

“Wait,” Frankie said. Mary turned, one eyebrow raised quizzically. Frankie swallowed. “Why me? I mean- I’m not special. I’m not even Christian. I have to have broken at least, like, seven commandments. Why would God want _me_ doing His work for him?”

 

Mary shook her head. “What or who you are doesn’t matter. Remember the gospel- the kingdom of God is inside you, not in the paths you take to find it. Look to your friends. Look to your family. You have been a child of God all along, as we all are. And you’ve been kind, and brave, and selfless. God notices these things.” She smiled. “Was that your last question?”

 

Frankie nodded, and Mary turned away again. Then Frankie’s head spun suddenly, and everything went dark. She was floating, still, but now she was aware of it, and the pull of gravity against her arms and legs and head. She was also sinking.

 

She opened her eyes. She was in her body again- she could feel the drying blood. She was drifting slowly towards the floor, like a feather in the wind, until her toes finally brushed the carpet. She stumbled as she landed, and felt Andrew catch her by the elbow. With her free hand, she reached around under her shirt to touch the spot where the phantom spear had pierced her. The wound was still there, ragged-edged, but it had closed. She ran her fingers across her forehead. Same with the cuts. Her wrists, she couldn’t see through the gauze, but she couldn’t feel any new blood seeping out.

 

She looked up. The gospel was still written across the ceiling, shining in the reflection from the stained glass windows. She looked to Houseman and smiled. “I don’t think that’s coming off.”

 

Houseman was still blanched white, with spots of colour in his cheeks and a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. “Miss. Paige, I don’t know what you’ve done here, but the question of divinity remains unanswered-”

 

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Do you think Satan graffitied your church?”

 

“I- I don’t-” He looked like he was a few seconds away from flailing his arms. “This is not- proof of supernatural phenomena is not proof of divine intervention. I don’t know what tricks you used for this display, but-”

 

“Cardinal,” she interrupted, stepping forward. He stumbled back like he thought she was going to blast him with lightning. “I don’t really care if you believe me or not. I don’t want to bring down your church. I don’t want anything to do with your church. I just want to be left alone.”

 

She glanced up again. The thunderclouds outside were blocking the sunlight, but the letters were still shining anyway, reflecting light she couldn’t see. She looked back to Houseman. “You’re going to leave me alone,” she said firmly. “You’re going to leave my friends alone. You’re going to leave Andrew alone. I don’t care what else.”

 

He all but bared his teeth over her shoulder at Andrew. “Father Kiernan, if you leave with her, you know you won’t be accepted back into the church. The Pope will never allow it. I will ensure-”

 

Frankie let his words drift into background noise and turned to look at Andrew. “You don’t have to follow me,” she said softly.

 

Andrew’s forehead was creased, his eyes fixed on Houseman like he was looking at something rotten. He pursed his lips. “Actually, I think I do.”

 

She let out a breath she hadn’t been sure she was holding, and held a hand out to him. “I think it’s time to go.”

 

He looked back to her, and his face relaxed into a smile as he nodded. He took her hand, squeezing the fingers slightly- he felt warm and dry against the flaking blood- and they walked towards the exit. Frankie glanced up one last time, but there was no sign of Mary or Alameida. The only thing that signified that they’d ever been there was the gold letters shining on the ceiling.


	11. Epilogue

“I don’t get why you have to leave,” Donna said.

 

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, though her tone had changed over the past two weeks. First it had been confused, then incredulous, and finally a wearied acceptance, because she knew by this point that she wasn’t dissuading Frankie from doing it. It didn’t stop her from asking, though.

 

“Told you,” Frankie said. She was perched on the stool behind the salon’s counter- she’d already packed up what few belongings she’d left in her locker, and now she was just waiting for Andrew to pick her up. “Super secret spy stuff,”

 

Patty rolled her eyes. “Okay, for _real_ this time.”

 

“Really for real.” Frankie said. “It _is_ secret. I pissed the fuck out of a bunch of Church officials and now they’re probably after me, so you’re both better off not knowing exactly where I’m going next.”

 

Donna snorted. “Like the Church isn’t pissed the fuck off at us anyway.”

 

Frankie just smiled. “God isn’t.”

 

Neither of them questioned her about that. She’d taken to making mysterious little proclamations like that over the past two weeks- not smugly, just inscrutably. It was all over her, sometimes, that feeling of- otherness. Like she’d been baptized in fire and come back not quite the same.

 

Patty held up the day’s paper. “Hey, did you read this?”

 

Frankie shook her head and took it from her, though she already knew what it would say. Across the top, there was a banner headline reading “MIRACLE IN PITTSBURGH?” crowning a picture of the church. The caption beneath read “Sources report that writing has miraculously appeared on the ceiling of the Church of Our Lady of Christ.”

 

“It says the Church won’t comment,” Patty said, flicking a droplet of hairspray at Frankie. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

 

“Who, me?” She glanced at her watch and slid off the stool. “I’d better get going, guys. Andrew’s going to be here soon.”

 

Donna hugged her tightly before she made for the door, whispering “call me, okay?” in her ear before letting go. Patty’s approach was a punch to the shoulder, but her voice was a but gruffer than usual as she said “Take care of yourself.”

 

“I will.”

 

The week-long thunderstorm had let up, so when she stepped outside, it was to sunlight so bright it almost hurt her eyes. There was a bench out front, and she settled down on it to wait, dropping her bag between her feet and tilting her head back to enjoy the April sun.

 

“Frankie?”

 

She cracked an eye open. Standing in front of her was Rebecca Stanley, dressed in a bright pink raincoat and smiling at her. Frankie let her head roll forward. “Hey, kiddo. What’re you doing out on your own?”

 

“I live down the street,” Rebecca said, pointing to where the industrial area gave over to a cluster of apartment buildings. “And Father Kiernan said you worked here, and I wanted to say hi, so Mom let me walk down. Can I sit with you?”

 

“Sure thing.” Frankie patted the bench next to her, and Rebecca plopped herself down, regarding Frankie curiously. “Father Derning’s gone.”

 

“I know,” Frankie said with a small sigh. He’d left after the showdown with Cardinal Houseman. She didn’t know if he’d been taken to Rome as some kind of reward for reporting her, or if he’d taken off on his own. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t feel all that bitter about the whole thing. The confrontation with Houseman- well that had been bound to happen whether he turned her in or not. Who knew? It might have been what saved her life. And anyway, wherever he was, she was pretty sure he was sorry about the whole thing. He’d lost his parish, after all.

 

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca went on. “So I asked Father Kiernan if he’d be our priest now, and he said no, because he’s not a priest anymore ‘cause the Pope’s mad at him. How come the Pope’s mad at him?”

 

“They had a fight,” Frankie said wryly. She’d been there for the phone call between him and the Vatican, which had included a lot of shouting and some thinly-veiled comparisons between her and a prostitute. She’d told him to point out that one of Jesus’s buddies was a prostitute, but on second thought, that might have been what sealed the deal. That, or the refusal to back down from the fight with Houseman, or the living in sin with a heretic. It was hard to tell.

 

Rebecca frowned. “Well can you be our next priest, then?”

 

Frankie started to laugh, then covered it with a cough to keep from hurting Rebecca’s feelings. “I can’t be a priest, kiddo. The Church wouldn’t let me.”

 

“Why?”

 

 _Why not_? “Because I’m not a Catholic,” she said. She could try to explain the Church’s doctrine on women priests (or sexually active priests, or heretical priests, or . . .) but she didn’t think Rebecca’s mother would appreciate it very much. They still went to church, after all.

 

“Oh,” Rebecca said, still frowning. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, Rebecca digging her toe into a crack in the sidewalk.

 

“I didn’t fall off my bike,” she said quietly.

 

Frankie looked over at her. She was chewing her lip pensively, but the scared-rabbit look she’d had earlier was gone. “Yeah, I figured.” Rebecca withdrew her lip from between her teeth. “You want to talk about that?”

 

“Uh-uh.” Rebecca shook her head. “My mom’s making me go see the new priest about it, ‘cause he’s a counselor, but I don’t know why. He talks about how much God wants me to forgive people a lot.”

 

Frankie made a huffing noise. “Well, I guess that’s what he thinks. For my money, though, you don't have to forgive anyone you don't want to.”

 

“Well I don't want to,” Rebecca said, pulling a face. Then she brightened. “Is it true there was a miracle at that other church?”

 

“What do you mean?” Frankie asked. Surely Marian apparitions weren’t big news withs even-year-olds, even churchgoing ones

 

“Well,” Rebecca said, “the priest who’s filling in for Father Derning said the Virgin Mary’s face showed up on the side of a building. There are pictures and everything.”

 

Frankie _did_ laugh this time. “Sorry,” she said. “I think someone just spray-painted that.” A car rolled up to the sidewalk, and she patted Rebecca’s head and stood up. “That’s my ride. I gotta go.”

 

“Bye.” Rebecca waves at her as she climbed into the passenger seat, and kept waving  until they’d pulled away from the curb. She leaved over as she buckled her seatbelt and kissed Andrew’s cheek. “Hey.”

 

“Hey.” He looked over at her and smiled, eyes crinkling. “Your suitcase is in the trunk. We can stop back at the apartment if you’d like.”

 

“Don’t need to.” Frankie tossed her knapsack into the back seat. “Everything’s in storage, anyway, and the airline tickets are in the bag.” She glanced out the window as the city sped past. She’d miss a lot of things about Pittsburgh- her job, her friends, her apartment- but she thought she might miss the city most of all, the sense of belonging. “Will there be a pay phone at the airport? I need to call someone before we leave.”

 

“No need.” With one hand, he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. She squeezed his fingers as he passed it to her. “Wow, a cell? You’re moving into the digital age.”

 

“Freed from the chains of self-imposed asceticism,” he said with a smile. She laughed a bit and leaned back in her seat, punching in the number. She wasn’t sure she’d get through, but she wanted to give it a shot.

 

Three rings, and a beep. “Hello?”

 

“Hi,” Frankie said, letting a smile spread over her face. “Mom, it’s me.”

 

“Frankie?” There was a rustling on the other end of the line, like she’d just stood up. “Oh my god, I haven’t talked to you in _weeks_! What’s going on?”

 

“Um,” Frankie said, glancing sideways at Andrew. “Well, that’s- a lot of stuff’s going on. I have a lot to tell you.” She ran a hand through her hair. “But I can tell you most of it in person. I’m going to be in Brazil by tomorrow. Are you still in Sao Paulo?”

 

“Yes- but-” Her mother sounded confused. “Why are you coming to Brazil?”

 

Frankie smiled. “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> The translated gospel referenced in this fic was left intentionally vague, because I felt it was tangential to the story. However, all the quotes I pulled are from the Gospel of St Thomas, which had a somewhat controversial reputation among religious scholars, and can be read online here: http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/thomas.htm


End file.
